


Tynwald

by MistyBeethoven



Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [36]
Category: 47 Ronin (2013)
Genre: Anger, Arranged Marriage, Attraction, BBW, Bathing/Washing, Breast Fucking, Cunnilingus, Demons, Doggy Style, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Falling In Love, Fantasy, Fight Club - Freeform, Fighting pit, Finger Sucking, For Adults Only, Forests, Healing Sex, Historical Fantasy, Historical Romance, Horror, Horror Fantasy, Isle of Man, Japan, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Large Breasts, Loss of Virginity, Love, Love Stories, Love/Hate, Missionary Position, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Oral Sex, Overweight, Penis In Vagina Sex, Pining, Pregnancy, Resentment, Resurrection, Romance, Sacrifice, Samurai, Self-Insert, Self-Sacrifice, Slavery, Unrequited Love, Virginity, Voyeurism, Walks In The Woods, Water Sex, Weight Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:13:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 52,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23288347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: Stolen away from my place on the Isle of Man by a greedy Dutchman, Adelbert Van Dijk, I am brought to Dejima in order to be sold to a wealthy Japanese Lord with an eye for plump female virgins. Violating myself in order to save my virginity, as punishment I am given to a fighter named Kai as a mate by the wrathful Van Dijk. Still a gentleman beneath his brutality, Kai chooses to protect me under an appearance only ruse that we are lovers, the man's heart still belonging to Asano Mika only.When Kai abandons me to save his true love, I am devastated when I arrive at Ako to find my lost friend having committed seppuku. Heartbroken, I take the dead man to the Tengu to resurrect. They begrudgingly do after learning of Kai's vow to stay with me; a vow they choose to enforce by making us unable to leave each other again.Once revived, the usually peaceful Kai soon comes to hate me as he realizes that he has returned to a world where he must watch his beloved Mika move on without him but never be by her side.When the ronin happens to anger a forest demon, however, and faces eternal torment, I end up facing my own anguish only to discover that Kai cares more for me than even he perhaps suspected...
Relationships: Asano Mika/Kai, Kai (47 Ronin)/Me, Tengu & Kai, Tengu & Me
Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [36]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589944
Comments: 68
Kudos: 32





	1. Dhone Sooillyn (Brown Eyes)

**Author's Note:**

> Kai was sweet and sexy. I really loved him. I liked 47 Ronin too. It was the type of film my sister and I would have watched over and over again on VHS during our childhood. Only now VHS tapes are gone so it would have had to have been DVD. :/ But it reminded me of a good old fashioned adventure film like Willow or The Princess Bride.
> 
> The story for this entry has been in my head for a while now. Only when it first formed over 15 years ago it was a Kai/Squeeze Pimel Lexx fanfic. I always regretted not writing it until I recently realized that I could very easily turn it into the Kai/47 Ronin entry for this series. It just needed some minor adjustments. But Ronin 47 Kai was so wonderfully close to Lexx Kai in a way (funnily I'm so dense I didn't realize that they shared the same name until much later :/ ) for what the story needed: an honorable and kind warrior separated from his true love after death and placed with a woman that loved him but feared he could never love her back.
> 
> Until death and sex showed up. Because death and sex make for good plot points and need and desire and all of those painful parts of life.
> 
> But finally love.
> 
> Always in the end...
> 
> Love.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I first lay eyes upon Kai in the fighting pits of Dejima.

The moment I first saw the man I would fall in love with he was deeply lost in the process of killing another human being.

Kai was a handsome man although months of fighting had made him more brutal than he had previously been. He was not groomed well, his hair long and matted, hanging down around his face like two dark curtains which he would peer out of with the shortest glimpse now and then of eyes which looked dark and dead. Dirt covered him thickly obviously due to the sweat he had worked his body into pouring out. His clothing was stained with the blood of other men and it looked as if his master's left him wearing it for days on end.

He appeared to be a hulking brute worthy of fighting only but from the moment my eyes first found him in that fighting pit in Dejima, I felt a moment of recognition concerning the inner strength and intelligence of the man underneath his facade of savagery whenever I caught a glimpse of his kind face past the constantly moving shield of his dirty, chestnut tresses. It shone brightly past the dust, grime, noise and foul smell of the place where Kai had been set against others to kill so he could survive one more day, so he could only face another day where he needed to kill to live for one more day after that.

Kai was stuck in a hopeless cycle of violence, having been sold as a slave after his exile from the Akō Domain when his Lord Asano Naganori was tricked into disgrace and accepted suicide by the treacherous Lord Kira. 

I didn't know any of this at the time, of course. The only thing that I knew was that I was a slave as well myself and that I was intended to be given as a gift to this man who had been forced to kill by his masters. I knew that this made me the _slave_ of a _slave_ in a way. But I was a _woman_ , and a defiant one at that, and this was what I had earned by my insubordinate actions.

I was told we were to be each other's punishment in a way: this fighter and I.

"There is your mate you, foul, fat piece of bloated flesh," my captor whispered into my ear with the purest loathing and contempt. "That is this Kai that I was telling you about. Do you like him, Erin? Can you picture him tearing you apart with those hands? The same hands that he has already killed two hundred and thirty three men with?"

I watched as this Kai suddenly grabbed the back of the head of his opponent, a bald and oiled down Japanese warrior who seemed mostly made of muscles. Yet, my intended took his head as if he were merely grasping the bloom of a wildflower, and quickly twisting it to the side, broke the man's neck in a sound which was loud enough to momentarily deafen the shouts of the blood hungry crowd. As the now dead warrior fell to the floor in a heap of limp and greasy flesh, the audience resumed its cheer while Kai looked up and suddenly found me while I stood on a higher tier, meeting my eyes for the first time and causing a shiver to pass through my plump frame.

"Make that two hundred and thirty _four_ ," Adelbert Van Dijk said with cruel relish. "They say he's been without a woman since he was brought here. I daresay, he'll make an even bigger mess between your fat thighs than you did."

While I continued to hold the gaze of the victor down below, I felt my heart begin to beat in a strange way as I realized that this killer meant as my punishment held for me no worse a threat than the man whom had pretended to be my savior; the same man who was standing behind me, prepared to offer me up as a sacrificial lamb to a monster who was staring up at me with as equally as strange a look as the beating of my heart in his now completely revealed brown and very human eyes.


	2. Goit (Taken)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am taken from my home on the Isle of Man and informed by my abductor of the reason for my abduction. Angered I seek revenge in a very unique way.

I had met my false savior after a series of events that I soon wished I had successfully avoided. If only I had not been so clumsy the night that Adelbert Van Dijk had walked into the pub where I worked as a barmaid, and I hadn't caught the Dutchman's striking blue eyes, I might have avoided the unexpected pain entirely. The problem was that I had been clumsy by nature since birth; glasses often had a habit of slipping out of my hand at the worst of times. It did not help that a large patron of the bar had happened to back into me at that precise moment and I had not found the strength to steady myself and could only watch helplessly as the glasses I was bringing to a table fell to the floor. They did not break, the glass being very thick and strong but the contents spilled out and the oaf whom had collided with me got the soles of his water damaged shoes wet.

I was on my knees, trying to set the glasses right side up again, when the boisterous and foul tempered Manxman had spun around to snarl down at me. "Look out where you go!"

The man was a giant, standing six foot seven, his head almost hitting the low roof of the bar. His width was almost equal to his height and though I was a woman possessed of substantial weight myself, a fact often commented on by the customers I served, his size frightened me. His hair was the shade of ebony and he glared down at me with eyes of muddy brown and I trembled on the dirty floor where I knelt in fear of the patron's retribution.

"I am most sorry," I apologized.

"Show me your sorrow by letting me ram my forgiveness up your hole skank."

"I-I cannot!" I stammered back at him. "I...have never and will not with the likes of you. My purity will remain till I am wed."

"She didn't mean you any harm," I heard a voice state to my side and turned my head only to have it almost hit the crotch of a stranger.

Embarrassed as I was to have my blushing face on level with his most delicate of areas, I quickly looked down at the liquid pooled around me and began to wipe it up with the rag I kept handy for such incidents. It was already stained with pints long since having been spilt and soaked up.

"She's a bloody harm to just be here!" the oaf sounded. "Takes up too much space as it is."

"You are not one to talk. The whole room trembles each time you take a step," my defender stated and I could tell more clearly then that English was not his native tongue.

As the rag in my hand became almost as wet as the puddle it was soaking up, I marked the stranger as being Dutch. The pub where I worked as a barmaid often saw many visitors to the Isle and I had versed myself well in their tongues and the joyful differences God through varied placements on His round earth had created between them.

I could not look up in the fear of what the giant would do to the genteel Dutchman. A shadow appeared to cross on the floor by my feet, arms outstretched and hands seeming to meet, I thought I heard the clink of coins. Confused by the darkness cast on the floor, however, I raised my head to see the Dutchman punch the Manxman in the stomach and the resulting effect which saw the giant astonishingly falling backwards and on to a group of his much smaller comrades. It made for quite the show and in retrospect I should have been smart enough to match this fact with the shadow which had obviously been of money changing hands.

Instead my insecurity in regards to my weight let me easily want to believe that the Dutchman had defended me against the Manxman and come out the victor. When one has been made to feel ashamed of oneself for most of their life they eagerly grasp on any sign of acceptance or affection. I felt into this longing as some sailors do the traps laid for them by certain pirates.

Once my savior had demonstrated his superior strength, he quickly knelt down to help me sop up the mess I had created and help me to my feet. Casting my vision on him for the first time I saw that he was a man an inch or two shy of six feet, that his skin had been made the color of wet sand from hours spent under the naked sun, his hair was blond and his eyes were the shade of ice water. He was handsome but not in the way which attracted me.

"Thank you," I said shyly, my plump, soft hand in his equally smooth one.

"I am Adelbert Van Dijk," he offered. "And what is your name if I may have it, pretty maiden?"

"Erin," I answered. "Erin of Snaefell."

"Well Erin of Snaefell," he said offering his arm to me. "Would you grant me the favor of allowing me to walk you home."

"But my work has not ended yet," I protested.

"Yes it has," he countered. "You shall return tomorrow when the air has cleared and the brute has vanished."

I took his arm then, feeling that it was a most wise suggestion. The oaf would surely rise to his feet sometime and I saw no other soul in the pub whom would offer me protection besides Van Dijk. "Thank you once more," I remarked.

"Think nothing of it," he said with a smile which even then appeared a little too wide for my liking.

* * *

The moon was bright over the Isle while he walked me home. Only it was not on the path that would have proven the quickest. Adelbert Van Dijk told me that he preferred the way along the shore and I foolishly trusted him despite that inner voice which was screaming at me to be wary.

"So you are a _maiden_ , Erin?" Adelbert asked. "As you claimed to that unruly beast at the bar?"

"Aye," I answered, believing that the man respected chastity as did I. He did infact, I was to soon discover. Only not for the same reasons.

"No man has ever known you, or showed you their _forgiveness_ as he so wonderfully stated it?"

My fright raised a bit there for he did not speak as ill of my tormentor as I would have found appropriate.

"No man has ever known me," I whispered.

"Good," Adelbert Van Dijk stated. "You shall do just fine then.

In the next instance, I felt a hand over my mouth and before I could scream into the flesh covering my mouth, which smelt of ale and fish, a pain seared on my skull as I was hit and soon saw only darkness.

* * *

Through the darkness which claimed me I struggled into the light with a massive feeling of pain in my head and a fog covering my eyes. I felt as if I was rocking like my mother had done to soothe me when I was very young. The room I was in was dark and smelt of must, mildew, sawdust and dampness. I gagged as I regained consciousness and suddenly found my stomach tossing and turning like my surroundings. As I broke through the last of the fog covering my brain, I heaved out the remains of my last supper. Hands and knees on the floor, I soon came to realize that my legs were both shackled and in chains when I tried to crawl away from my own vomit.

"So you are awake," Van Dijk said and I raised my head to see him standing in front of me.

On all fours before him and chained to the wall, I felt little more than an animal. "You did this to me?" I asked.

"Well no," he replied with a pout. "My accomplice, that man I paid at the pub, did. It was our arrangement you see. The pub owner told us that he had never seen you accept any patrons offers to sleep with them for payment. The _few_ of them that offered that is. But I had to see your actions for myself to be sure and also give the impression that you could trust me enough to walk with me alone at night. Two opposing facts, it would seem, a girl who remains chaste but will share the sole company of a man under moonlight. A second confirmation of your virginity came from yourself before the man hit you as instructed. Sadly, despite your pledge to your honor, I could not take your word as gospel. While you slept, I glanced between those fat thighs of yours to ensure you were not lying to me as so many do. But I saw to my gratitude that you were infact being truthful and you are intact."

Fear flooded my mind and I spat at his feet believing that he had been villain enough to force himself on me whilst I slept.

"Ahhhh," Aldebert said with a malicious smile. ""Do not fear. Women of great weight do not interest me. I could no more of forced myself on you than I would a pig. But I am aware of a certain Lord in Japan who fancies large women with their maidenhead intact. In Japan the women are mostly thin and a big girl such as you is a bit of a novelty, I have learnt. We are sailing to Dejima where he will pay me handsomely for you, Erin of Snaefell."

I tried to scramble towards him in my rancor but the chains held me back, digging into my flesh painfully. Teasingly he took my chin in his hand and I grabbed at it, digging my claws in. This little act earned a harsh slap across my face and I fell back down again.

"Sit tight and enjoy the voyage," Van Dijk remarked in a hiss before he left me to go on deck.

Alone in the dark lower regions of the vessel, I considered the man's words. We were traveling to a place where I would be sold for my virginity. The same virtue that I had kept defensively for the man that I loved and would love me in return someday. Although I was no longer a young girl and had little hope of falling in love and being any man's lover, I dreaded and wept in fear at the thought of losing my virginity to a stranger and that a vile creature such as Aldebert Van Dijk should gain wealth from it while I suffered.

_"While you slept, I glanced between those fat thighs of yours to ensure you were not lying to me as so many do. But I saw that you were infact being truthful and you are intact."_

Remembering the Dutchman's words, I wiped my eyes and nose on the sleeve covering my arm and then brought my hand between those same fat thighs he had so cruelly referenced. Dipping my fingers inside of my folds, I found the opening and knew that the thin layer of film which had been my false savior's sole interest in me was situated near it. Taking a deep breath, and in a rage, I began to tear at the area with my fingers, clawing and wounding the flesh around my entrance. After a while, I pulled my fingers out from myself and saw the blood trailing down them like veins of red on the outside of my skin.

Not pleased at this alone, I returned my hand to my hole and wounded myself even more, wishing to make myself appear not merely only used but a flat out whore as well.


	3. Turrysagh (Journey)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the journey from the Isle of Man to Dejima, I hide my self defilement from my captor.

I had stained the planks beneath me with crimson from my wounds. Incase Adelbert Van Dijk guessed what I had done to myself, I clawed at and bit my ankles and arms close to where the shackles were tightly in place so it would appear that I had bled from these areas alone.

When next Van Dijk came to see me, he tsked loudly when he saw these fresh and bloody wounds, believing, as I wished that he would, that I had been solely trying to escape from my bonds.

"And what good would _that_ do?" he asked me condescendingly. "There is no where to run off to. You cannot swim. You should be a brave girl and take your chances with Lord Hisaki. You might find you like it in the end. Or wherever he intends to place himself inside of you."

I spat at Van Dijk then and it landed in the center of his cheek of golden brown. It looked wonderfully offensive against the man's well groomed state, which spoke of good manners, merely another article of clothing he adorned, and wealth, which he had, no doubt, stolen or garnered through the exploitation of others. Taking a snow white handkerchief from out of his pristine suit pocket he wiped the saliva off from his skin without as much as a glimmer of the wrath his eyes professed. After this was done, however, the man leapt on me, offering me another slap and then pushed me down on the ground with a force that spoke of his rage. I experienced a flash of pain between my legs where I had damaged myself. I held little fear that the man meant to abuse me in that particular way, knowing that he cherished my purity. Still, I became frightened he would discover what I had done.

Adelbert pinned me to the planks and proceeded to spit repeatedly into my face. He was no longer striking me, fearing that he would irrevocably damage the item that he was transporting to Dejima. When he finally rose off of me, I wiped my drenched face off with the sleeve of my dress and glowered up at my abductor while he, in return, gloated down at me.

"Save your saliva also," Adelbert Van Dijk stated. "From what I have heard, Hisaki has ways of forcing his women to open their mouths and accept his offering. Your spit will help it to slide in far deeper and not cause you _undue_ discomfort."

"Then I will bite it off and swallow it so he will never do it again," I snapped.

This caused Van Dijk to burst into laughter and even begin to clap in genuine amusement. "Good girl! That would make for quite the show; I lament that I will not be there to see it. Whatever you choose to do to your new owner concerns me not at all. As long as he has paid for you, you can do to each other as you see fit. But in the meantime, I must insist that you eat what the deckhand will bring in for you. We cannot have you starve on our little journey but must keep you plump for the Lord."

I was about to say that I would not eat a single bite when my stomach growled and I blushed deeply knowing it would only be a lie and he would know it. I was famished and for this reason, and also to keep up my strength, intended to eat whatever was handed to me.

"Eat and try not to fall overboard if you _do_ happen to escape," the man warned. "We don't want any ship passing by to mistake you for a whale and stick a harpoon into your bountiful person."

That was going a tad too far, I thought. I _was_ large but the chances of somebody mistaking me for a whale were impossible.

Rubbing my cheek, I remained silent, though, while I watched him walk away. When he was safely out of view, I smiled to myself knowing that I had, at least, managed to keep my defilement from him. Despite my wounded pride and the insult to my weight, it would be worth the look on Adelbert Van Dijk's face when this Lord Hisaki found out that he was trying to sell to him a defiled woman in place of the chaste one he would represent me as. That fact alone, comforted me on the way to Dejima as I tried unsuccessfully to forget about the life and family I was leaving so very far behind me.

* * *

The journey seemed horribly long from the dock at the Isle of Man to the one waiting for us in Japan. I was fed very well: potatoes mostly and meat. Things to keep me fat. Water was my main drink but often I was also given ale. This I did not drink but saved to apply to the cuts between my legs, to keep them uninfected. I did not wish to die just yet but to wait till I had won my revenge on my captor.

Often I felt the ship shake as it docked at this port or that to replenish dwindling supplies but I never saw where we were. I spent my first voyage away from my birthplace ignorant and blind to the scenery which one travels in the first place to experience and admire. All I was encountering was sea sickness and loneliness, I bemoaned.

Adelbert came to see me on a few occassions and none of these were entirely pleasant but made me long for my former solitary state. I was made to suffer several insults about my size and the fact that he found it repellent. I was left with the distinct impression that the Dutchman had irritated the ship's crew enough by that point and desired to find someone new to torment: one that he need not rely on to sail the ship he was traveling on.

I was all too easy a target, chained to the wall as I was.

When Van Dijk was not criticizing me for my girth, he delighted in telling me in great detail about what Lord Hisaki would likely do to me. Having been a barmaid since I had been a very young girl, I was not exactly ignorant to the varied ways in which a man and a woman's body could be united when it came to sexual relations. Still some of Van Dijk's descriptions were enough to shock and appall me. I was continually left praying to my God that I would not be sold to a man whom I did not love and who would expect those degrading and painful acts of me.

It appeared that Hisaki did not only enjoy partaking in such fornications but viewing them as well. When he tired of any concubine, the poor thing having lost the luster which had garnered his initial interest, he would soon force her to amuse him by being with one of his other forgotten women or even an animal such as his horse.

"Sometimes he will even conjure a demon from the forest, they say," my Dutch companion once informed me with maliciousness. "Japan has many dark woods with secret corners where horrible beings exist that the mind can only contemplate in that world of sleep or delirium."

I had heard tales of different demons and spirits on the Isle and shuddered from the insinuation. Yet I found myself listening intently to his words about them and fascinated nonetheless; such otherworldly creatures always intrigued me though I had never seen one during my lifetime.

"The yokai..." Adelbert said, uttering the word like a curse. "Hisaki holds some in his sway it is rumored. He let's the demon have his way with a concubine in order for the demon to bear its children into the human world. Or simply for fun. Demons hate humanity. In return, the yokai grant Lord Hisaki great wealth which he uses to procure more mistresses..."

"Which he then offers to the demons when he has had his fill," I hissed, understanding the cycle. "It is a wheel forever in motion that they have set up between them. Sustainable and good business for them both."

Van Dijk nodded in sudden approval and I could tell I had impressed him somewhat. "You are a practical girl, Erin. You see the way the world runs. Maybe one day you will find it in your heart to understand why I am doing what I am."

"Oh, I understand that right now, well enough as it is," I stated matter of factly.

"You do?" he exclaimed in surprise.

"Yes," I replied. "You are a son of a bitch and a greedy bastard at that."

Van Dijk smiled brightly in the darkness of the bowels of the ship and his teeth seemed the brightest thing in the heart of the world where light often seemed forbidden. "Oh! You do understand me after all!" he enthused in enraptured glee.

* * *

When the ship finally docked in Dejima and I was taken on deck for the first time in weeks, my eyes were unused to the sun and the bright sky where it rested. Smells came to me first and it was a mixture of that which was a blessing to my nostrils and that which was a damnation to them also. I squinted while the oaf who had helped in tricking me into my plight took my arm very roughly. His rough handling of me earned a condemnation from his comrade not to bruise the piece of property intended for another.

"She's filthy," my traitorous kinsman stated. "Will Hisaki still pay for such a dirty pile of flesh?"

"Do you take me for an idiot?" Van Dijk commented, still effortlessly talking in my own language to his henchman. "She is to be cleaned while we await Hisaki's coming."

"Your to do it yourself then?" the Manxman remarked with a laugh and I thought I could see him smiling past the pain in my green-gray eyes.

"And you must still mistake me for a fool," Adelbert said. "I've hired a local girl to do it for me. She supposedly knows how Hisaki likes them: Foreign but clothed as any oriental miko."

"Miko?" I mumbled. Geisha was a term that I was familiar with but this word was new to me.

"Shrine maiden," Van Dijk said wearily. "A shaman...the women that run the temples here. It coincides with Hisaki's obsession with purity and wanting your maidenhead intact before he takes it himself. I suppose, he takes himself as a god to deflower a virgin. Or maybe a demon to rape one. Who the hell knows. Although, I daresay, you will soon enough, Erin."

I could tell from the shared laughter of the two men, and from the way that the shadows that represented them turned to each other, that they were mutually entertained at the idea of what was to happen to me. I did not risk smiling but one danced inside of my soul and the corners of my lips at the knowledge and anticipation of my vengeance against them both.

As Van Dijk and the Manxman forcefully took me from the ship and I began to regain my vision, Dejima came to alien and boisterous life before my eyes; eyes which had previously been sheltered and uneducated in the ways outside of my small village. I viewed in silence and awe the strange and unknown spectacle before me, holding tightly and with great pleasure to the secret of what Lord Hisaki would find when he was to examine Adelbert Van Dijk's stolen and imported piece of _goods_.


	4. Cooilleen (Revenge)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I finally get my revenge on Adelbert Van Dijk as Lord Hisaki discovers my defilement. However, I soon fear that Van Dijk may end up having the last laugh after all.

I was dragged through the streets of Dejima trying to plead with this passerby or that to help free me, that I had been taken against my will and about to be sold to become a whore and a slave. Both Van Dijk and the Manxman laughed at my continued efforts to save myself, however, and not one pair of eyes looked willing to help me.

"People are sold here as often as any object or food, Erin of Snaefell," Adelbert soon told me after my voice became weak from desperate pleas to unreceptive hearts. "They are most of them guilty of trading humans or selling themselves. It's best you save your voice. Nobody listens or cares."

Coming to a building similar to all of the others, the Manxman opened the door and a blonde woman appeared, dressed in clothing European in nature, obviously Dutch and not Japanese. She took one lascivious look at Van Dijk and smiled bawdily. "Hello stranger," she cooed and I was forced to endure the sight of my captor kissing the female greeter. Even this act he preformed as if he were afraid it would put a crease in his lips and I could not fathom why the woman couldn't tell that she was putting far too much effort into the endeavor than what it was worth.

When she turned to look at me, however, I soon wished she had turned her attention to it even longer for her gaze of disdain and repulsion was withering. "This is what you brought back for him then?" she asked.

"Yes," Van Dijk said. "It is what he likes right?"

She wrinkled up her perky little nose. "Yeah, she's _more_ than enough. That's the problem."

All three accomplices started to laugh at the joke and I could only try to bite back a sob and keep the tears in my eyes lest they fell and became another source of amusement.

"I'll get her taken care of," the woman stated, taking hold of my arm. "As soon as I saw the ship docking I started to heat up the water. She looks like she'll need it. You wait for his lordship down in the front room."

Although I had no love for Adelbert and the Manxman, I knew them more than the woman and looked over my shoulder at the two men as she guided me down the hall to a room where a large tub had been filled with water which was still steaming. A towel, presumably to dry myself off, was placed over its edge. She pushed me towards the tub and threw a bar of soap at me which smelled pleasant enough but hit me painfully on the chest. "Scrub yourself clean then. I'll not do it for you."

She then faced with her back towards me as if the sight would sicken her. "Don't try anything funny," she warned. "Even if you were to overpower me you'd still have to pass Adelbert and he can be quite violent when he wants to be."

"I know," I whispered under my breath.

She needn't have feared though. I would play the role of complacent slave until I had revelled in my revenge. I had not defiled myself for nothing. During the ship ride to Dejima, seeing Van Dijk's expression when Hisaki saw what he would take for duplicitousness had become my obsession and comfort. Nobody would steal that from me and I was merely grateful that the woman was leaving my washing to myself and spared me from embarrassment and the fear that she would discover that I had destroyed my most valuable aspect.

I undressed hastily and placed my foot in the water which was sending up clouds of visible vapour into the air above it. It was surely hot enough to take off the dirt and grime my large body had accumulated throughout the weeks of my journey, weeks spent below deck and without sunshine, but not hot enough to burn my skin. I took this for calculation on the part of those whom wished to sell me also. I began to use the soap to remove the filth that covered me like a coat of clothing. As I did my eyes fell on two articles of real clothing hanging from a hook on the warped and water damaged door. One was white as snow while the other was a bright and pretty shade of red.

"What are those?" I asked Van Dijk's lady friend.

The woman walked towards them and took them in her hands. "This is a miko shozoku. It's what miko's wear here and Lord Hisaki loves a fat, foreign miko."

"So I heard," I mumbled, scraping off some particularly stubborn dirt from my left breast.

"This part is called a hakui," she said taking hold of the white fabric. Letting it go, she then grabbed the red piece of the outfit rather roughly. "This skirt is a hakama, called a hibakama. They say Miko's can talk to the spirits and step out of their bodies due in part to their virginity."

She let go of the outfit in contempt. "Bunch of superstitious nonsense," she commented. "Virgins and demons."

"You've never seen the demons in the woods?" I asked, my chest finally free of all dirt.

"No. And I never will," she said returning to her place by the wall.

"But what of Lord Hisaki's wealth and bargains with them?" I inquired, feeling oddly disappointed. I wanted the tales of the yokai to be true, I realized, for they had intrigued me despite my fears. That it had all possibly been a story created by Van Dijk to torment me with left me feeling dismayed although I knew I should have been relieved.

"He's the only demon if you ask me," Adelbert's henchwoman snickered. "He rapes and steals from those on his land and under his rule. He's a cold and corrupt bastard and it will be his just reward if Adel charges him a lot for your fat self."

"At my own expense?" I snapped angrily, pouring water over my hair in the final part of my washing away the dirt.

"Why not? You deserve what you get. You were the one foolish enough to fall for that act of Adel's. And to keep chaste for some silly romantic idea. Men use you and you use them. That's all that there is to it. There are no heroes that will do anything and _everything_ to protect you. That's hogwash too. Speaking of which, are you about done? Hisaki has enough wrinkles for the both of you, I reckon."

I was and stepped out of the tub, grabbing the towel on the edge of the tub to start drying myself off.

"You make sure you washed your lady bits?" she demanded, removing the miko shozoku from off the door. "Hisaki likes them clean so he can make 'em good and dirty himself."

"Yes," I replied, grateful she didn't see the little smile dancing on my lips. "All washed and ready."

She hurled the miko dress at me as she had the soap and I was humiliated that I had to stop covering myself in order to catch it. But my humiliation was luckily wasted for she would not even so much as look at me. "Change into that," she ordered bluntly. "When you're done, I'll fix your hair up as they do. You'll be a sight for his Lordship's eyes if nobody else in their right mind's. But when you're as filthy rich as he is you can _afford_ to be eccentric, I suppose," she mused.

* * *

Just like the talks of demons in the woods, I liked the Miko dress probably more than I should have. It was pretty, especially with the big red bow on the hibakama. It fit comfortably also which was nice. When I had finished, the woman turned around and looked displeased. She studied me with her hands on her hips. "Hisaki likes them pure but he likes his fat girls for what they got up top as well. Let's accentuate that it bit more for his Lord's sake."

She came towards me and tightened the bow of red around my waist at the front and then back, which made it hard to breath but my breasts stick out a bit more. They looked kind of pretty like that also, I discovered as she dragged me towards a full length mirror near the back of the room. Van Dijk's companion then set about fixing my hair. Not only did she brush the long aurburnish brown tresses but she grabbed a pair of scissors from off of a nearby table and cut the front above my eyes in a perfect line. Pulling the rest of my hair back, she tied it with a ribbon of red.

By the time she was finished, I looked beautiful even to my own judgmental eyes, ones I could see were very large, round and green in their surprised admiration.

"You'll do," the woman stated in reluctant approval.

* * *

When I was led out of the washing room and taken to the front one where Van Dijk and the Manxman had been told to wait, I knew instantly that Lord Hisaki had arrived. Even though the room was darkened, a state no less aided by the night which had finally arrived outside, I could see quite well due to the many candles placed here and there throughout the room. A small Japanese man was seated on a fraying oriental rug. Wearing an elaborate robe of orange the color of a sunset, he possessed a long white beard and although there sat a small black hat on his head, from the lack of hair around that hat, I knew his head was bald underneath either from the blade of a razor or by nature. On either of his sides stood what I took for a guard. They were Samurai, prepared to protect their lord or die while trying. If anything made me regret my decision to tear my maidenhead it was the sight of the sharp katanas in their hands. I suddenly feared that I would be taken equally as much of a traitor as Adelbert Van Dijk and the Manxman and be made to suffer retribution.

Seeing the hungry look in the old man's eyes as he saw me for the first time, such regret was short lived however. Death was preferable to what he, no doubt, was planning for me.

His eyes like small black stones trailed up and down my plump body, resting on my chest and nodding in pleased appraisal. I squirmed where I stood under his perverted gaze. Hisaki turned to Van Dijk, who was sitting along with the Manxman to the Lord's left and said something to him. I heard the words perfectly but failed to understand a single word, every one being spoken in Japanese. The Dutchman replied in the same language and then turned to address me.

"Come closer and lie down before your new Master, Erin of Snaefell," Van Dijk instructed. "With your legs spread before him so he can get a good look between them."

I tried to appear nervous, which wasn't all that difficult in relation to the situation, but felt an inner triumph starting to rise inside of my soul. Walking toward them slowly, I at first knelt on the fraying rug and then lay back, as Adelbert Van Dijk grabbed a dripping candle to shine on my now exposed crotch and parted legs, the hakama lifted up to my navel. Knowing that Lord Hisaki, Adelbert Van Dijk and the Manxman were all staring at my most private of areas was devastating in a way but I focused on Van Dijk's face as he brought his hand to my brown and furry mound and parted the folds in order to show off my maidenhead to his wealthy and prestigious client.

Only it was no longer intact as when last he had seen it. Now it looked as if every sailor on board the ship we had traveled on had had a go with me before the Dutchman had offered me to Hisaki.

I kept my eyes on Adelbert's face as he saw my torn and desecrated layer. It was not worth the pain, fear, loneliness and degradation I had suffered since I had been captured and taken to Japan against my will.

But it was delicious nonetheless.

As the Dutchman's eyes focused on my vagina, he saw for the first time the damage I had inflicted on myself. His blue eyes enlarged to a comical state as he remained focused on my defilement and then lifted them to look at me. I gave the man a defiant look and a gloating little smirk as I continued to lie on my back in the pristine miko shozoku, a gown I should not be permitted to wear if my opening was revealing the truth.

Lord Hisaki started to exclaim in outraged and heated words, ones I understood without translation, accusations that the Dutchman was trying to deceive him. Adelbert tried to defend himself but the Japanese Lord would hear no excuse. I watched as he turned to one of his Samurai and nodded. I heard the sound of the katana being drawn, a sound which almost sounded like knives being sharpened, and with a bright flash of steel, the candle glinting off of it for a second and blinding me momentarily, I heard the sword swinging and was confused when a weight landed on my stomach and a flash of burning pain seared the skin on my crotch. Regaining my eyesight, I saw that what had landed on my belly was nothing other than the Manxman's head. He was staring at me open eyed and in fright, his mouth wide in the surprise of his death, which he had never expected to come so soon. I jolted backwards sending the head falling off of me to land at the feet of Van Dijk's woman. Startled as the Manxman turned his unseeing gaze upwards at her now instead, she began to scream and backed into a table with several candles. They toppled to the ground rolling to a curtain which quickly caught on fire.

The other Samurai prepared to cut off Van Dijk's head but he got to one knee and was quickly reaching into his gun's holster. I heard a shot ringing out behind me, for by this time I was not about to just lie about and accept my death when chaos had offered me a distraction to ease with my escape. I ran straight to the doorway leaving the Dutchman to his fate.

There was a block of wood in place over the door from which I had entered the building, but I managed with a little effort to lift it and run into the darkness outside. In the black of Dejima's nighttime, I saw fire glowing from one of its windows as I fled, the heavy curtain which had been hiding the happenings inside having been set ablaze and now revealing color the shade of Hisaki's robe.

I ran quickly down the settlement's streets and momentarily believed I had succeeded in escape until I felt somebody push me to the ground from behind. Rolling over in the dirt, I prepared to kick my attacker with my bare feet; I hesitated when I saw Adelbert Van Dijk glaring down at me in purest hatred, his gun aimed at my head, though.

Enraged, Adelbert grabbed me by the hand and pulled me to my feet, spinning me around until my back was against his chest. Grasping me forcefully from behind, he spat into my ear, "So you don't fancy being sold as a virgin to a Lord for a small fortune, Erin of Snaefell?"

I struggled, trying to free myself without success and further halted in the effort by the barrel of the gun placed to my temple.

"We'll see if it suits you any better to be given away as a whore to a monster then," Adelbert announced with relish as he pushed me down the torch lit streets of Dejima.


	5. Scragh (Scream)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am finally introduced to the warrior known as Kai.

Adelbert Van Dijk's raised voice caught the attention of everybody that we passed as he revelled in telling me about the monster he was eagerly prepared to sacrifice me to. The light from the torches cast his face in eerie hues of red and he looked very much like the devil he was describing to me. This beast was a man sold into a fighting pit in Dejima he had heard for killing his own lord. Now he fought and killed men for the amusement of the primarily Dutch traders who came to the tiny island settlement in Japan.

"His owners hate him," Adelbert shouted, tired of pushing me and choosing to painfully grab my arm by the wrist and drag me down the streets instead. "He's a half breed: Half Japanese and half who knows what...A mongrel. But they need to keep him somewhat well pleased in order for him to fight...He's quite the draw for visitors. They enjoy watching his brutality in person; He's killed more men single and bare handedly than a small army. The people lay their little bets for or against him and those whom run the place take a percentage of it all as they hand out drinks and meat. I think I'll get an ale out of them, at least, for bringing their pet a woman to finally ravish after so long. Not a very pretty one, though, so he won't enjoy himself too much and get lofty ideas. Maybe they'll charge people to see that as well!"

I started to pull back, trying to escape from his grip but it was too tight. My arm seared from the effort and Van Dijk only increased his efforts to drag me as painfully and quickly forward so he could be rid of me all the more earlier. His glee at my fate gave him strength and speed and everytime he turned to gaze at me with his wild and mad blue eyes it was hard to picture a monster more frightening than he was. Still, though I had damaged myself for revenge, I did not fancy being ravaged in front of an audience by a murderous madman who delighted in killing his adversaries.

"No!" I screamed and Adelbert raised his fist and struck me harshly. The ring on his hand tore the flesh on my cheek and I felt blood running from it.

"Go ahead and scream to your heart's content," he laughed. "I will wound you for every cry and no longer need to worry about the conditions of the goods that I am transporting. The only thing that this creature, Kai, will be interested in is the area you have already torn. And after he's had that, I daresay, what he'll do with you afterwards. And I do not pretend to give a damn for that matter either."

We passed a few more torches until we came to a set of stairs which led to a wooden building from which I heard the sound of both men and women's voices crying out in violent joy and anger. They were revelling in some sport I now suspected to know the true nature of: murder. Having returned to pushing me after complaining of his hand getting tired from dragging my heavy weight, Adelbert rammed me through the door and I went falling forward. My stomach rammed against a wooden rail and I felt myself losing balance and almost falling forward and over it, down to the area where the almost obscene sounding calls and shouts were emanating from. As I was about to topple over, the thought occurred in my frantic mind that perhaps I should let myself go and break my neck in order to spare myself of what was to come. Such fatalism could not win against my impulsive survival instinct, however, which urged my hands to grasp the long piece of wood, clutch on to it and propel myself backwards in order to save the life which hardly meant anything to anyone anymore.

As I regained my balance, Van Dijk was soon behind me once again, holding me about my thick waist with one arm as he took my blood smeared face in his other hand. His fingers dug into my already torn and aching flesh making me scream out loudly in pain. Amidst the caterwauling down below us, my scream soon became lost and as worthless as my life which I had recklessly decided to save. Van Dijk forcefully directed my gaze to the fight occurring below us, a fight that held everyone in noisome and agitated thrall.

Two warriors on the bare space in the middle of the room had won their attention. The performance being offered was one that had fascinated man since Cain had first killed his own brother, spilling his blood so it could call out to its Maker in confession the next time He came to call on the offspring of his two most perfect and horrible creations. It was life and death and little else. Mercy had no place on the wooden floor of that fighting pit in Dejima; no more than it had in Adelbert Van Dijk's heart.

I knew between the two men who seemed intent on killing each other whom my mate was meant to be. The mountainous and muscled giant with a head void of a single strand of hair was obviously Japanese. It was the other man with the curtains of brown, long hair and a smaller yet still large framed body who was obviously part European in descent. He was the half breed Kai and he was breathtaking. I found myself fighting the fact that I was compelled by the sight of the man whom was both obviously Asian and far from it all at once.

"There is your mate you, foul, fat piece of bloated flesh," Van Dijk whispered into my ear, each syllable full of the hatred I had won from him past his first initial disgusted indifference. "That is this Kai that I was telling you about. Do you like him, Erin? Can you picture him tearing you apart with those hands? The same hands that he has already killed two hundred and thirty three men with?"

I felt a stirring inside me at the thought of this Kai touching me then, as if the area of my body below was suddenly burning the same shade as the hakama covering it. My face alike turned a shade to match the blood it was weeping from my shame and embarrassment. I was to be sold to Kai to ravage. Why then was the thought of him taking me in that manner not frightening me but causing me to become aroused instead? My nipples were hardening in the hakui, pressing against its white fabric, at the vision of him kissing and groping them as he entered me. I was grateful that Adelbert's hand was placed on the middle of my body so he would not discover my body's suprising excitement.

In one swift and almost poetic motion, I viewed in unwanted arousal the rest of the fight which did not last long before Kai finished it by snapping his opponent's thick neck. The large oiled man fell to the floor, and his victory won, Kai for the first time placed his focus away from his now dead enemy. In shock, I watched as he turned it on me alone despite the large crowd surrounding him. Maybe it was the startling red and white of my Miko guise which caught his eyes, I realized, or perhaps he took me with my English complexion as an outsider such as himself. Nevertheless, our eyes locked and the sounds of shouting and oaths lessened from the shock I felt course throughout my body as I was given my first view of a face which did not seem like a monster at all. Kai was unnervingly handsome and peaceful despite the act of violence I had just been forced to watch him commit. A shiver claimed me then, momentarily adding to the physical pleasure I was in the grip of; a grip equally as real as the physical hold Adelbert Van Dijk then had on me to keep me from escaping.

"Make that two hundred and thirty four," Adelbert Van Dijk said with cruel relish. "They say he's been without a woman since he was brought here. I daresay, he'll make an even bigger mess between your fat thighs than you did."

Kai and I continued to stare at each other and I thought that I saw the man's mouth turn downward in a sad knowing smile. I offered it back to him because I knew without words what the smile was trying to tell me: life is always the blood on your cheek or the blood on my hands, isn't it, strange little Miko? I then cried out in shock as I watched several men from the crowd emerge. There were four of them in total: three men, only one of which was Asian. They descended on the man whom had just won his battle as if he were the defeated instead. One man approached Kai from behind and placed a black hood over his head; there was no holes to see out of in the hood but only one in its middle, presumably to breath. A man each grabbed one of the warrior's hands and shackled them while the fourth man wielded a sword and placed its tip against Kai's stomach. Chained, blind and properly coerced, the victor was urged off of the fight pit's floor back to wherever they kept him when he was not made to fight for his life and their amusement.

Once he was gone, the crowd seemed to dissipate and Adelbert pushed me forward and down a narrow flight of steps as people rudely rushed past us. My captor used me as a human shield from their approach and I knew that I would be badly bruised should I be alive to see the morrow.

"What are you doing here then, Adelbert Van Dijk?" a man exclaimed and I recognized him as the man whom had placed the hood over Kai's head. He must have returned from placing his own slave inside of his cage. "You back so early from Europe?"

The man was two inches taller than Van Dijk and seemed as unrefined as he was well groomed. His shirt was relatively clean, as opposed to the blood splattered one Kai had been wearing, but it hung off his body in a haphazard and lazy way.

"Yes," Adelbert stated. "I have a present for that fighter of yours. She made a fool of me not one hour ago and needs to learn what happens to those very few who manage to succeed in making that mistake."

With that statement, Van Dijk hurled me forward to his acquaintance who caught me roughly. The man looked down at me in contempt as he added more bruises that may never come to my fleshy upper arms.

"A fat foreign Miko? Tsk tsk...what a sight of it! Don't know if Kai'll want to fuck her, eat her or kill her to use as his bed instead of the straw we give him and remember to change every three months. That is _if_ we remember to."

This warranted a wail of laughter from Adelbert. "He can do all three if he fancies. I on the other hand never wish to see the bloated, wretched bitch again. Vaarwel!"

That was his send off more to his friend than to me, the woman he had taken from her small isle home and intended to sell for great wealth. The last I ever saw of him was the back of his pristine suit as he turned and walked away, apparently so sick of me he had forgotten his free glass of ale.

The man he had left me with started to laugh then also. "C'mon you, skank," he bellowed. "Nothing like a good bit of kut after a fight. Ask my wife after we've had a good one!"

Once again, I found myself being shoved forward against my will. The arena was vacant by this time and the man brought me to a farther back region of the building. Stopping by a strange grate on the floor, he bent down, pulling me down with him and unlocked it. Flinging it open, the bars clanging as they hit the floor violently on the other side, the man cupped a hand over his mouth and called out into the darkness, "Here's a gift for you, you half breed bastard!"

And with that, I was thrown down into the ominous void before I had the chance to worry about the fall I was making itself.

Landing painfully on the ground below, I shook my head, my newly washed and cut tresses falling around my face as I realized gratefully that the floor was earthen and my fall had been not as damaging as it might have been because of this. I peered up into the small bit of light to see the horrid man's face grinning down at me in crude delight.

"Give her a good go!" he called out further. "She's big; she can take it."

He was laughing, as he remained gazing down into the pit reserved for his fighter, and I was glaring up at him, prepared to shout back something nasty when a dirty hand shot out of the darkness and found me where I was lying on the ground. A squeal of shock shot past my lips as I was pulled into the heavily shadowed area. Through the bit of light which made its way sucessfully to us, I saw Kai. His body was over mine, his legs framing my own while his hands were on the ground on either side of my head. I could see the whites of the warrior's small eyes as he was staring down at me intensely. Warm, moist breath made from his deep breathing, touched the skin on my blood encrusted face and I felt the reunion between my body and the sexual excitement which had claimed me earlier.

Almost as if to get away from the feeling as much as from the man himself, I scooted my body backwards only to have him instantly back on top of me, his athetlic and wide body actually touching me this time as he pinned me down. The heat grew inside of me as my overlarge chest accidentally brushed against his chest, my nipples hardening and becoming erect again to my consternation and bliss. My head was pressed against the dirt covered floor as his strong hand came to rest over my mouth and I stared up into his soft brown eyes. The strength and fight went out of me as I gazed into their enigmatic depths and I knew that if Kai was to force himself on me I could not count it as rape. The realization was swift and sudden but no less true that I would willingly give to this stranger what I had been appalled to give to Lord Hisaki.

I shyly parted my legs, desperate for him to enter me and answer my awakened passion; my entire body and soul were alive with sexual longing and anticipation as my breasts heaved against his body, waiting for him to ravage me.

I was disappointed then, however, when instead of taking me, Kai leaned in closer to my ear and whispered very softly one solitary word:

" _Scream_."


	6. Gialdyn (Promise)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kai makes a promise to me.

My natural inclination was to ask this Kai " _What_?"

Despite having heard him perfectly well in his darkened dungeon cell, even havinv understood the word he spoke to me in my own language no less, I was confused and startled by the whole situation. To have been expecting to scream by my own will before being placed in with the killer, then to have suffered overpowering arousal and desire for the man I was meant to fear, I was thrown further off balance by his telling me to scream instead of violating me and causing me to do so of my own choice.

Still there was something so confidently calm in his soft brown eyes that I did not stop to ask him what he meant or what his intentions were.

I merely started to scream.

The sound was not convincing enough to my own ears in the beginning and I saw Kai's face hovering so closely to mine look momentarily disappointed by my effort. Wanting to make him proud of me, I started to channel the horrors I had faced during the last months into my cry of pain. It was a sound full of loneliness and fear, desperation and hopelessness. It both pleased the man leaning over my body and made him look at me in sorrow as well.

I could tell it was the sound his soul longed to make but, for whatever reasons, he had chosen to mute instead.

Laughter began to sound from up on the floor above us. Kai turned to cast his gaze on the light coming in from the hole I had been pushed down. Upon seeing a shadow disrupt the light, Kai took me in his arms and we rolled together further into the darkness as I continued my false screams. We both looked to the grate above and saw the Fighting Pit manager's head hanging upside down through the hole, trying to catch a glimpse of the rape he thought was occurring underneath him. 

I felt Kai's arms around me as we lay pressed against each other on our sides on the dirty floor. They were strong arms, having been made even more muscled due to months of fighting, I assumed. Feeling his body so close to mine, I raised my eyes to his face and looked at his beautiful features. While most men would have been made cruel by night after night devoted to savagery, I was once again surprised at how calm and kind this man appeared. Everything from his thoughtful, sad eyes to his lips, which seemed caught between impassivity and a sad little frown, spoke of composure and honor. This man had accepted the sorrow which belonged to him but had not let it destroy him. I found myself holding on to his body a little tighter in the shadows, as if by doing so I could take some of his suffering into myself, wanting to absorb some of his pain so it would not be so heavy for him to carry alone.

Though I clung to him, my body shaking while I continued to scream, Kai did not look at me but kept his focus upward on our peeper.

Suddenly, the man I had been offered to as a sacrifice leaned towards my ear and I felt his breath upon it, sending a shiver throughout my body from the flash of warmth and moisture on my skin.

"Now slowly make the sounds a woman makes when a man is pleasing her," Kai commanded.

I blushed, an action hopefully hidden from the man by the darkness we were lost in. I had never been with a man before but I was familiar with the sounds that he meant. Oftentimes I had come across lovers at the pub where I worked. The whole floor above had been reserved for the prostitutes and my boss took a percentage from their earnings for letting them use his place and rooms above for their business. The sounds had always made me curious, cries that sounded so much like pain or little noises that seemed unexpected in their delight or mews like some needful animal. They had aroused me in their own way. I had long possessed an ability to place myself in another's life and imagine their thoughts and feelings as my own. My body had responded to the sounds of sex I had heard being made behind closed doors even if the sounds were put on for the sake of giving clientele their money's worth in the hope of repeat business. The women liked to ensnare their men with their act of surrender and carnal bliss, that the men could please them as none that came before had been able to. It was the lie they sold and it worked more often than not. Many of the faces I saw returned despite the fact that I had learned from those sounds that it was all only a performance in a way.

Now Kai was asking me to imitate them, including their falseness, for what I presumed was our mutual welfare.

I started to make the transition from screams to moans and it wasn't an easy journey. Kai's "owner" looked confused when I threw an appraising glance at him and Kai was looking down at me with an expression which had returned to being critical, his breathing stopped altogether in the face at my poor attempt at simulating pleasure. Only then his hand accidentally brushed against my breast as he shifted and I _did_ experience real pleasure. It made my nipple tingle and the area deep within between my legs feel as if there was a sudden pressure there. Oh how I longed for him to do it again, pictured him cupping my breasts with his hands in a more passionate way as opposed to his eerie calmness! The pressure grew and suddenly my sounds seemed a great deal less forced and far more real. I won Kai's approval again and he started to throw his own grunts and calls out to the mix. His sounds infact were arousing me all the more and I felt as if my thighs and groin were swollen as I listened to him, aware of his own groin so close to me. I wanted to bring to this man, whom was basically a stranger, some of the same pleasure he was unknowingly bringing to me and fought the urge to take that private part of him in my hand to physically do so. I realized then what had also brought about my physical excitement when I had listened to the whores at their work was the knowledge that they were pleasing their lovers, making the bodies of the males they serviced become hard in the way I had heard men became when aroused.

I wanted to feel Kai's hardness then, to make him happy and take away the pain I saw in his eyes.

My hand was boldly going to his cock in an attempt to make my fantasy a reality when the peeper stopped me by suddenly and rudely talking.

"That's disgusting you great fat hoer! You like it now do you?" he exclaimed. "And you, Kai! Did you have to make it good for her! Punish the slut don't satisfy her! Filth the both of you."

And with a curse in Dutch, the man grabbed the grate and locked it once more.

I was about to speak but Kai placed a finger over my mouth as he kept his eyes to the floor above us and listened to the sounds of the footsteps going farther away. With each one dust and grime seemed to fall from the floorboards that were over our heads reminding me of snow made of dirt.

We waited for a while, Kai and myself, my plump body in his warm grasp until the sounds seemed to die altogether. When the last noise greeted us, my new companion peered down at me before he relinquished his hold. Free again, and sorry for it, I sat up as I watched Kai move to the wall a bit away and sit with his back against it as he proceeded to study me from a distance in what little light the cell afforded. I expected to have to continue our first meeting in shadows and dark when he reached to his side and grabbed something from off of the floor. A few seconds later I heard the sound of a match being struck and then saw in the light that the now lit candle bestowed the full contents of Kai's cage.

There was a mattress over by the wall which rested on the dirt covered floor. A small stand was beside it with a book or two on top. These were the most notable items in an otherwise barren space. Candles were placed along the room's floor as if tracing it in some odd way.

Of course, the most striking thing which occupied the cage, however, was its usual prisoner and I looked at him to see that he was still studying me in a serenely curious way. In embarrassment, I turned to the candle and stared at it in wonder.

"They do not wish for my sight to go; not with being kept in the dark for so long," he informed. "They give me light because it benefits them."

I wanted to speak but found myself too intimidated to coax my tongue and throat into the action.

"You are not a Miko," Kai stated wrly.

"How do you come to speak my language?" I asked for surely it seemed unlikely that this man had ever traveled to the Isle of Man where I had been born and raised.

"Am I?" Kai asked looking genuinely stunned. "I didn't know."

I changed my position so I was leaning towards him, my legs still in the red hakama under me. "You speak a language and you are unaware of it?"

He smiled a sweet and restrained smile obviously not about to answer my question or divulge his secrets. "You are dressed in the outfit reserved for shrine maidens but you are clearly not Shinto," he retaliated.

I saw him studying my outfit again and saw his eyes lingering on my chest for a long moment as his cheeks turned the shade of an apple. Startled, I followed what had caught his attention and made him blush so deeply only to discover that, in our scuffle on the floor and subsequent rolling, my kimono had opened; Kai was being granted an excellent view of my pale, bountiful cleavage. I squeaked and tried to close it as we sat in embarrassed silence for a while.

When Kai spoke again his voice sounded slightly more hoarse and he needed to clear it before the words came out the way he intended. "I know why you were offered to me," he said. "But I do not know why you are here. You are not a Miko but from your modesty you honor your attire."

Glowing from the words meant as a compliment, I offered him a shy smile and the truth for it did not shame me.

"I was brought here against my will by a Dutchman known as Adelbert Van Dijk. He intended to sell me to a Lord Hisaki."

Kai nodded solemnly; from the severity of his expression I knew that he was familiar with the Lord's name, reputation and proclivities.

"I was to be sold on the requirement of my purity. I damaged this with my own hands on the journey from my homeland on the Isle of Man to Dejima."

"You did it to yourself?" the man asked incredulously.

I nodded now. "Yes. I did not want Van Dijk to profit from my rape. I wished to humiliate him as well if faced with my own humiliation"

"And in retribution he gave you to them to offer to me instead?"

Kai may have been known for his strength and fighting skills but it was apparent that his brain was as highly skilled as his body.

"Yes," I replied.

"Do you know the name of the beast you were intended to be sacrificed to?" he inquired.

"Kai. But I see no monster before me."

His eyes twinkled from amusement or the candlelight; it was hard to say which one made them dance. "And does the alien Miko before me possess a name herself?"

"Erin of Snaefell," I answered.

He nodded again. "Well Erin of Snaefell...I promise that as long as you are in my company I will not allow you to fall into any more abuse than you have already suffered. I swear it on the name of Lord Asano Naganori."

The name of this Lord Asano Naganori was foreign to me but the vow the man had made to defend me was perfectly understood and set about a glow as strong as the candle's flame shining brightly on the two former strangers in its presence.

"It is like Tynwald," I remarked shyly.

"What?" Kai asked.

I went to explain but my body became weak for a second, the length of the day and its intensity of events suddenly catching up to me and stealing my strength.

Kai held up a hand. "You are tired. There will be time tomorrow."

I watched as the man rose to his feet and walked towards his worn mattress, stopping to look at me once from over his shoulder to say one last sentiment for the night.

"Here in the dark and the despair there is always time."

Kai then fell onto the bed which awaited him and faced the wall.

Knowing of nothing else to do, I went towards the man on my hands and knees and crawled into the bed with him. Our backs were facing each other but did not touch. Still I was afraid Kai would demand that I leave his bed. I dreaded hearing the words from him until I fell asleep in exhaustion, my fear being no more real than the sounds of our lovemaking.


	7. Peccah (Sin)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kai and I learn a bit more about one another but find another threat looming on the horizon.

When I awoke after having fallen asleep it was to the sound of my own screaming. I had been dreaming of the fire claiming the building where I had been brought with the intention of being sold. Only this time, instead of escaping, I could not leave and watched in horror as Lord Hisaki burned alive to an ashen skeleton. As he came towards me, I had begun to scream for help only to wake up in the dark and to believe mistakenly that I was back on board the ship taking me away from my beloved Isle.

Somebody was with me in the near dark, I realized in horror past the groggy state of having just left my sleep and dream behind. Terrified, I began to struggle with the person believing that maybe it was indeed Lord Hisaki returned from Hell with his horrible, lusty eyes and emerging from the flames to hurt me after all. Then I heard a voice saying, "Shhhh," softly in my ear and I realized that it was Kai and I started to cry openly into the exposed skin of his chest, clinging to him for some sort of comfort in the darkness of his cell.

"It is all right," he cooed, stroking my long hair, now no longer as clean as it had been after Van Dijk's mistress had attended to it.

Kai's heart on the other side of my head which was pressed against his chest was beating harshly and I knew that my screaming had not only woken him from his own slumber but had scared him in a way as well. Of course, the screams I had made were far more real than the false ones he had coaxed me into earlier to fool the guard. However, knowing it was only a nightmare which had caused my shrieking, Kai held me gently as I listened to the sound of his racing heart begin to slow its pace and as my own tried vainly to follow.

"I am sorry," I apologized.

"Don't be," he threw the apology away.

We were two unwanted and mistreated outcasts holding and being held in the dark of a makeshift dungeon in Dejima. I looked at the floor and the candles having almost burned their lives away; it was still so dark and almost cold. The warmth of the man holding me was welcomed. Yet as I held him even closer, I felt him shiver. Looking down, I realized that my own robe had become loose again as I had slept and thrashed to and fro in my awakening. My bare breasts were touching the man's area below his chest, heaving against it as my breathing struggled to calm down. I wanted to back away in embarrassment but was too shy to move nor could I find the strength to.

Neither could he it seemed so we remained in that innocent for us yet almost too intimate of poses.

"Is it day yet?" I asked, unsure of how long we had been sleeping.

"It is difficult to tell down here until they remember to feed me or come to bring me to fight," he informed me, his voice oddly husky.

My nipples started to tingle and I wondered if he could feel them doing so as they were pressed into his beautiful and smooth skin. I could feel his body, was painfully aware of his nearness and the way it was arousing me. The sensation shot straight to the place Adelbert Van Dijk had intended saved for Hisaki. I shifted my legs and received a flash of pleasure from my act. I gasped loudly, only causing my breasts to heave more against my comforter; I thought I heard him groan very lowly from my unplanned action.

"Are you all right?" he asked, squeezing my shoulder and then releasing it as of to touch me was poison.

"I...I am," I stated. "Only a bit disoriented. To be in the Isle of Man one moment, then to be in Japan...to wake up sleeping next to a stranger in a dark cell...that is something else entirely."

"But I am not a stranger," he said, trying to coax me into accepting my current situation and to release my confusion. "You know I am Kai and I know you are Erin of Snaefell."

I wanted to cry from his kindness, from the way his deep voice said my name and I could feel each syllable resonating from his chest.

"What is this Snaefell like?" he asked me, part in curiosity and part to distract me from my sorrow.

"On the Isle of Man, where I come, Snaefell is the highest mount. On a clear day they say you can see six kingdoms from it.

"Those are?"

"The Isle of Man, England, Ireland, Scotland Wales and Heaven..."

"And what of the sea?" Kai inquired of me.

"Is that a kingdom?" I asked him in stricken awe.

He laughed in amusement, more comfortable now seeing me simply as a child he could console and educate. "Of course. There is a whole other world contained in it. The Tengu always say it is a world in and of itself."

I was the one to shiver then, an act which caused my flesh against him to jiggle a bit, reminding the man again of the fact that I was a woman and not a child. Kai threw his head back from the movement and inhaled quickly, biting his lip. To save him from his discomfort, I hastily asked, "You have seen the Tengu? They exist?"

He lowered his head and looked down at my wide eyed face, his own eyes helplessly glancing momentarily at the mounds of my pale chest next to his own. Raising his vision, trying to focus on my eyes alone, he answered with the barest hint of a tremble to his voice, "I was raised by them."

I was about to ask him more about this fact when the sound of the grate above us opening stopped us and we turned to look at it in unison. I made to part from Kai but he forcefully whispered no and held me tightly to him. I was shocked as he lowered my robe even lower so my shoulders and back were now exposed. It made our position look all the more carnal and made my arousal return with a sudden ravenous force; especially as his arms grasped me passionately, after having moves my legs to wrap around him, giving the impression that our bodies were linked together sexually.

"We wish them to think we are lovers," Kai whispered into my ear. "That I have lain claim to you. The fact will save you from their attention or ill will."

Kai began to make thrusting movements and I followed suit so that it looked as if we were having each other there in the candle lit darkness. We made soft moans and cries, my own close to being real from the fact that feigning the act with Kai was almost as satisfying as the real thing.

Almost.

A rope appeared suddenly as did a short man I had never seen before. He carried a bag in his hands and slid down the rope effortlessly while carrying it. He was about four feet with a shaved or balding head and when he got to the bottom of the cell he looked at us with lewd pleasure. "Hans was telling us you got a girl, Kai," he said, throwing the bag at him and taking in with glee the sight of my naked chest kissing Kai's own as we grinded against each other in our mock act of lovemaking. "She could be a lot skinnier but she might me after being down here and sharing your meals with her after a few weeks. That is if you choose to share. And if the boss let's ya keep her once he finds out what debauchery you are _up_ to under his God fearing roof."

With that statement the little man climbed up his cheap and difficult ladder, pulling it up instantly behind him so that it could not assist us in our own escape or suicide.

"What did he mean by that?" I turned and asked Kai in fright, still absent mindingly grinding even though we were now alone, fearing I would be torn away from the man whom now held me in his embrace. It was only there in Kai's arms that I had felt the first glimmer of hope after my ordeal and whom was able to make me feel safe despite being so far from home.

Kai looked down at me. "The man whom runs this fighting pit will abide violence but not sex. If he learns of you having been given to me, Erin of Snaefell, and he marks it as a sin we shall both be punished."

The warrior suddenly seemed to become aware of my breasts again and my sensuous movement against him. He grabbed me sharply by the shoulders, warning me to stop. Filled with sorrow, I laid my head against Kai's chest once more and earned yet another groan and shiver from the man, as if he did not need the fighting pit owner's decision but had made the judgment that my closeness was to be called a sin all by himself.


	8. Poosey (Marriage)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boss returns with a suprising demand for this favored fighter and myself.

Days came and passed. I stayed always in Kai's cell, where it was dark save for the light of the candles he had collected, but I did not mind. Having been alone and without a friend in the shadowed recesses of the boat which had brought me to Japan, it was far better to be in this dark and dirty place with a man I was beginning to trust.

Every night they came to collect Kai with chains and weapons aimed at his back. The short rope climber returned often and I soon learnt his name was Carl. He always had some lewd remark to make about what we had been up to down in the pit and I knew he would have been disappointed to learn that our relationship was as chaste as that between a priest and a nun. Not that I wasn't constantly aware of my companion's body or the fact that Kai seemed to occassionally look at my own also. This seemed to cause him undue distress.

My own torment came, however, night after night, as Kai was dragged, mercilessly and like some animal, to the upper level where he was made to fight. The sound of the audience madly cheering, calling or, worst yet, their mad outrage would reach me in the lower cell where I was left to imagine what they were applauding or booing. I could hear the sounds of violence as well but in those days I had been unable to tell which came from Kai or his opponent. Inevitably when they returned my friend to me I knew that Kai had been victorious, though, and my fear as vain as Van Dijk's hope of a small fortune from Lord Hisaki regarding my virtue had been.

Whenever Kai returned, I had to fight the urge to run to him and hold him. It would only have embarrassed the man I knew and gone against the wall of compassionate detachment he had embraced. This manner was something that the warrior had found his strength in and held on to since his adoption by a man named Lord Asano Naganori.

Down in the dark basement of the Dejima fighting pit, often forgotten about until our meals were brought or Kai was taken to fight, my companion told me in great detail, over the course of a week, about his childhood with the Tengu and his eventual escape from them. Exhausted and close to death, the boy had been discovered by Asano and taken to live with him in the Ako Domain. There the kindly lord's samurais had targeted the poor foundling for his status as a half breed and teased, tormented, ridiculed and ostracized him. The leader of the samurai, a man named Ōishi Yoshio had been the most cruel to Kai. I knew this not from outright confession but rather from the way my protector's voice became tense while mentioning him. There was respect there, as it was obvious Kai showed to any living creature, but pain and frustration lay at the edge of each word and I could guess at the animosity between the two men.

If it had not been for the kindness and companionship shown to Kai by Lord Asano's beautiful daughter, Mika, it was obvious that he would not have survived emotionally.

Kai loved her.

This love was as obvious as the complete lack thereof between he and Oishi. The way his deep voice became softer, the not so subtle change and glow in his dark eyes when he remembered her and spoke her name in a way I'd heard Catholics whisper the name of a saint or the Virgin Mary herself.

Could he read in my own, I wondered, that learning of his love for Mika I had experienced unwanted jealousy and a deep pain that I had never truly experienced before?

Probably not, I understood. And if he did what would it matter? I was virtually a stranger compared to a woman he had known and loved since his painful childhood.

Despite my own pain, my heart broke for Kai and Mika when he reached the part of his tale where a man named Lord Kira arrived and succeeded in taking the Ako domain and Mika for himself. With the help of his witch concubine, this Kira had tricked Asano into disgracing himself and needing to commit seppuku.

"Seppuku?" I interrupted Kai. "What is seppuku?"

The man looked at me as if discerning if I could handle the full truth behind the word I did not understand. "It is a suicide which is performed to restore honor. One places a blade into the belly, and moving that blade from the left to right, succeeds in disembowling themselves."

I grasped my own belly in shock, picturing what on earth that horrific sounding practice would feel like. But I did not vomit or so much as become shaken which seemed to impress Kai.

The samurai became ronins, another word I needed explained, and Kai had been sold to a man called Sanderson Visser, the owner of this fighting pit in the Dutch run island of Dejima.

"All histories reach the part where they intersect with the present," Kai stated. "We have reached such a time. My days were filled with endless fights and not much else until a foreign, imposter Miko came falling down from the sky."

He looked at me in the amusement he seemed to have reserved for me. I preferred this to the tense displeasure that clouded his eyes whenever our bodies became too close or my robe fell open, revealing my breasts to him. Even if he saw me only as a younger sister at these times, one he had vowed to take care of it was comforting.

"And what is your history, Erin of Snaefell?" he asked.

"There is little to tell," I confessed. "My life had previously been sheltered. My father abandoned my mother, my sister and I. My mother fell ill and I went to work in the tavern to help take care of us. Then one night a Dutchman named Adelbert Van Dijk walked into the bar and, as you said, my history became my present."

I gave a little shrug which made my robe fall open again and my breasts tumble out which caused Kai to turn away again sternly, momentarily wrecking our moment of peace. Holding it back shut again, I cursed myself and my seeming inability to keep the damn thing closed.

All anger at ourselves was soon vanquished, however, when the trapdoor opened again and Carl came sliding down the rope. "Boss is back. He wants to see you two fornicators."

Kai had come to stand behind me when the small man had made his entrance and I now felt his hands tighten on my shoulders. We had both been fearing this meeting with Visser and his puritanical punishment but had been spared it for a few days since the man was off attending to other matters. I was wondering how we were to see the Dutchman when Carl shouted at us to come forward into the light before speedily climbing up the rope. Kai urged me to start walking until we both stood under the small amount of light provided by the grate. We blinked up, our eyes becoming used to it again.

Loud footsteps sounded, dirt fell from the floorboards and suddenly in the small square a massive head appeared to gawk down at us. The man I assumed to be Sanderson Visser peered down at us past his three enormous chins and as his long hair fell down in golden ringlets to each side of his wrinkled face. His blue eyes were opened wide in shock as he looked at me, trying to understand why a girl of clear English descent was dressed like a Miko. He then turned to Kai.

"Have you been _knowing_ her Kai?"

"Yes," Kai stated. "Every second when I am not fighting."

Sanderson turned his head and spat in moral disgust. He then turned to look at me. "And you...you, whore, you have _known_ him?"

I didn't know what to say, my own morals fighting against the lie, but Kai squeezed my shoulder gently and I nodded. Quickly I added, "He has been my first."

Maybe it was the words or simply the way I said them, shy and as far removed from being a woman of loose conduct as I was from my homeland but Visser looked at me a little less harshly.

"Has he been?" the man asked.

I murmured confirmation and felt Kai become tense behind me, dropping his hands from off my shoulders as if I had burned him.

"Do you like her, Kai? Has she been good to you."

"Yes," my friend answered, the word coming out roughly.

"It is not good for the man to be alone," Sanderson Visser quoted from Genesis and peered down at us in almost content approval. "The ceremony will take place in an hour."

"The ceremony?" Kai asked, taking hold of my upper arms now, my body no longer offensive to him.

"We can't have you two continuing to live in sin down there," Sanderson said with a large toothy smile. "And I cannot separate this woman from the first man to know her. So there is really only one option left: the two of you must be married."

I looked back at Kai as my eyes widened in shock. I expected to see surprise or anger on his bearded face but instead found him staring down at me in almost blank acceptance. I supposed, having heard the details of how his life had gone so far, being unexpectedly forced to marry a woman he did not love seemed the most logical next move in his future soon to be made present.

* * *

Waiting for Visser to return with the Minister, we could talk more freely. "I can't let you do this," I turned to face Kai. "I will tell him that we are not lovers."

"He would not believe you with the show we have presented for the others," Kai stated in defeat. "And if he is to look at you, he will see where you have marked yourself. He will take us both for liars and you for the woman he suspected you were before you impressed him. The punishment would be doubly severe...it could mean your life, Erin. I am not prepared to live with that on my conscience."

"But are you really ready to go through with a Christian ceremony to make it binding?" I asked desperately. Some part of me hoped that the man could still find his way back to Mika, although the thought broke my heart as well.

"I am not a Christian," Kai replied. "It won't mean more than the show it is meant to," he added.

I sighed. I could see in his eyes he was resolved to see Visser's intention through to protect me. I could also see the differences in our respective faiths then as well. Kai saw no future for himself and Mika even if he could return to her. The difference between their social rankings prohibited it to him. He believed that he was beneath her and any union would only disgrace her. He had clung to the emotional detatchment presented in his Buddhist beliefs to spare him. It was the epitome of rationality. The cup was already broken so he did not need to mourn for it. For the complete madness my Christian faith involved, one where God's own son had died under the charge of blasphemy for humanity while nailed to a cross only to be resurrected a few days later, I was willing to throw myself into all the agony a love affair threatened if it meant the narrow chance of a happy ending or at least years of passion and love before the inevitable end. If I was to love, rank and the threat of pain and disgrace could be damned for all that it mattered to me!

"It is merely a deal between us, Erin," Kai said with the return of his amusement. "It is an arrangement. Marriages of that sort are common, in both my world and yours."

"Tynwald," I mumbled.

"There it is again. That word _Tynwald_. What does it mean?" Kai asked in curious confusion.

"Tynwald means meeting field," I sighed. "It is a stepped hill where they conduct politics on the Isle of my birth."

"Tynwald this basement is to be then," Kai said gently as he extended his hand for me to take.

I stared at it and groaned, feeling torn in my heart and in my soul. I knew that the ceremony would not be real to the man before me. But I could not promise nor fool myself that it would not be to me.

Maybe, though, I reasoned, that would be all right.

Now having fallen in love with Kai could I ever swear myself to another man anyway? Knowing this, I quickly took his hand and shook it, sealing my fate in a more concrete fashion than the warrior was doing.

* * *

The ceremony was small and swift. I was taken from the hole with more difficulty than when I had entered it first. Jokes were made at my expense as I was pulled up and I tried my best not to give in to my tears. Kai stood there with three swords aimed at his long and beautiful back the whole time while the Minister suffered the whole thing, bearing a look on his sallow face as if he could not wait to escape. Sanderson Visser looked well pleased that he had saved two sinners from damnation. A wooden ring was given, old and cheap, and my husband placed it on my chubby finger. When the time arrived for Kai and myself to kiss, Visser stepped between us and said we could handle that part in private. I saw the look of gratitude on Kai's face: it appeared that this was the one part of the ceremony which could indeed frighten him. We were tossed back into Kai's dungeon where we looked at each other awkwardly for a while until they came to collect the lost Lord Asano's ward for his nightly war.

Alone in the pit, I waited as I always did in fright. This time, however, I twisted the ring around on my finger as the time passed and I listened to the sound of those whom were free and bloodthirsty above me.

When Kai returned he was visibly tired and I ran to him, taking hold of his arm to try to steady him. It was the first time I had gone to him but inwardly I felt it was what was right for a wife to do with her man. "I must sleep," was all Kai said however.

As he fell on to the solitary mattress and faced away from me, I understood that it had finally caught up to him what he had just done and the fact that he had married another woman and not his beloved.

"Mika," I heard him whisper as he likewise fell into sleep. After sleep had claimed him he cried out her name several times, now no longer inhibited by consciousness.

I remained awake, still twirling the ring about on my left finger. Sadness filled me in the knowldege that on the wedding night I had dreamed so often of as a child I still did not _know_ a man, as Sanderson Visser would say, and on top of that sorrow I had to listen to my husband calling out another woman's name.

Such was the cross carried by those whom chose to feel and lose their hearts, I accepted.


	9. Gooyn (Robe)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After our marriage, Kai distances himself from me, much to my sorrow.

Kai and I lived for months in a shared existence which spoke more of a brother and sister in our behaviour towards each other than it did of a man and wife. While we continued our show of conjungal relations for the fighting pit's workers, Kai would not touch me when they were not anywhere closeby to see. It was as if after our marriage vows, I had become more of a poison to him than ever before. If he somehow managed to forget my presence lying next to him at night and moved backwards, bumping his back against my own, he would suddenly recoil and move away instantly, muttering an apology that wounded me in its own specific way.

His nightly whispering for his lost true love also suceeded in hurting me, though, I knew it was my own fault for having fallen in love with a man whom had already given his love to a woman I could never hope to compare to.

The only time we ever made physical contact was when he allowed me to care for the occassional wounds he gathered after a night's worth of fighting. Not that they were ever drastic: Kai having yet to lose a single battle.

Other than his seeming discomfort at my body being too near to him, the man still showed me the same kind compassion from the days when we had first met. My welfare was important to him, as were my feelings, and often when he caught me in a melancholy mood he inquired if I was all right. On one particular day, as I sat in the corner away from the mattress, which witnessed the uneventful nights of my married life, silently crying as Kai meditated elsewhere, the warrior broke his meditations to ask me once more, "Is anything troubling you?"

"I'm fine," I inevitably lied. How could I tell him that I had been foolish enough to fall in love with him and my pain was that typically suffered by all those whom carried with them a heart broken with no hope of being healed?

"You miss your land? Your family?" he asked softly. I could hear in his voice that his thoughts were directed inwardly and the distress he had been enduring after his exile from the Ako Domain.  
I nodded and bit my lip, blinking back tears. It was a truth that I missed Snaefell and both my mother and sister. But I missed with equal strength the feel of his arms holding me and those early instances where he had not seemed to physically distance himself from my body. Now all I could hope for was those times when Carl would drop from the hole above us and we feigned some hint of a carnal act to keep him both well pleased and in the dark about our true relationship, one I wished was closer to the false one.

I heard him rise from off of the dirt covered floor, where he had been kneeling, and come towards me. The candles which surrounded us cast his shadow on the wall before me, enveloping my own so that we became one in a way we had never been during our union.

"You will return there one day," Kai stated. "I promise this."

I was shocked then to feel his hand resting on my shoulder. Maybe it was the fact that my back was facing him that had made him bold enough to finally touch me again willingly The feeling of it sent a shiver throughout my body and I was about to grab it in my soft, plump hand when he pulled the appendage back and away from me.

We heard the sound of the grate opening once more but neither Kai nor myself felt in a rush to assume some vulgar position. My husband seemed too unnerved by having broken whatever personal vow he had made to himself to not touch me while I was too jarred by his sincere touch to desire falling into his pretend one. When Carl slid down his rope, I saw depicted on his scrunched features a look of disappointment that we had robbed him of his prurient thrill for the day.

"Here!" he spat throwing our meal at us along with a white papered bundle. "Boss said to give you that."

The small man then pulled his slight frame up the rope and towards the upper level, finding no reason to stay. While Kai went silently towards the food and water, I, fearing nearness to him while he trying to achieve his certain detatchment, went to the bundle instead.

Sanderson Visser had developed a fondness towards me. Having believed he had redeemed me from becoming a fallen woman and converted Kai simply by having him endure a Christian marriage ceremony, he had brought me a fresh change of attire frequently and allowed me to go above ground for the occassional breath of fresh air. Whenever I did so, I thought I could see in Kai's brown eyes the hope that maybe I would escape somehow and not return back to our shared prison. Whether this desire was for myself or so he no longer had to avoid making physical contact with me, I could never tell. In any case, I also was forced to witness his irritation when I returned from my visits from above and the resulting pain.

Unfolding the white paper, I discovered a beautiful oriental robe inside. My miko outfit had been discarded a while back, having become too engrained with dirt, as well as various tears and rips, which seemed impossible to avoid in the cell. The robe was beautiful and as I looked at it in astonishment, I stroked its almost shimmering fabric and knew that it was most probably silk. It was a shade of deep blue, one which calmed me to my weary and agitated soul. Images of birds (nightingales?) had been woven into the cloth amongst leaves and vines. My hands ran over the robe in appreciation.

"Come and eat," Kai instructed to the right of me and I carefully wrapped the robe back inside of the paper it had been hiding in before.

I crawled on my knees over to where Kai had already divided our afternoon meal. It was a meat of questionable identity along with several vegetables, all boiled to within an inch of still being edible.

"Yummm..." I muttered.

Kai turned, looked down at me and offered a kind smile. His eyes then drifted down to the front of my current dress. My large breasts were pressing against it, constrained, yet terribly full against the cloth. I thought that I saw a glimpse of hunger then contained in his eyes as if he found my chest more appetizing than the food his " _owners_ " had brought him. I liked the way it felt as he stared at my breasts and intentionally took a deep breath to make them swell even wider for his appraisal, an action which made delicious heat between my legs,close to where I had damaged myself. The action also seemed to wake my husband from his lapse into human desire and want.

"Here," he said and pushed my food towards me.

Kai then took his own with him far away from me.  
Once more, I was left feeling like some toxic substance he feared tainting himself with by exposure, and this time his food as well. I sighed, sat down and ate my own, although I had no taste for it.

* * *

While Kai was uplevel fighting that night, an event which seemed to be winning even more raucous reactions than usual from the crowd, I changed in to the robe Visser had given to me. It was nice to finally have an article of clothing to wear for sleeping, I thought, as I cooed in delight, wrapping the soft satin around my fleshy body. Before changing, I had scrubbed off that same flesh with some water we had collected and saved. It had been a waste but I hated dirtying the beautiful robe even more swiftly than it would inevitably become. Running my hands over my now silk covered body, my hands lingered over my breasts and my groin and buttocks, imagining that it was Kai touching me and not only myself. I gasped as my arousal started and grew from my fantasy but was suddenly shocked from my excitement by a loud sound above. It sounded almost as if a cannon had gone off. Whatever it had been the rebervations from the impact of the blow made the floor boards above literally shake and dust began to fall from above as if it was showering down on me. I ran to stand under the hatch above, which held little dust being opened and closed daily, and proceeded to shake off the dirt that had gotten on the robe.

Fear quickly seized me for the crowd was going crazy, their chanting growing to defeaning proportions.

"Kai," I whispered as my mind easily conjured too many frightening events which might had occurred to drive them into such an uproar. Though, in the beginning I had feared for my husband's life, during the weeks that had passed since my introduction to Kai I had grown too confident in his ability as a warrior; I had forgotten the danger these battles presented to him. Now terrified that my widowhood had been heralded by a loud bang, I paced the length of my dungeon, wishing to discern what was going on from voices too crazed to be coherent. I started to weep, begging God to end my torment and let me know that Kai was still alive.

And if he were dead to somehow bring him once more to life.

When after close to half an hour had passed of my supplications and the grate opened, I was relieved when Kai was given back to me. Relief quickly transformed into fear again as the man lay there in a crumpled heap.

"Kai!" I cried and ran to him.

Grabbing his head, I saw him quickly open his eyes to gaze at me. "Shhhh," he whispered.

I held him as I waited to hear the sound of footsteps leaving us. When it was safe, Kai rose to his feet but leaned on me to help steady him. "I did not want them to know that I was less damaged than they believed lest they put me through that again too soon," he stated as he stumbled towards the mattress.

"What happened?" I asked.

Kai breathed in deeply as he sat on the edge of the soiled mattress. "That sound you heard was my body hitting the ground," he calmly informed. "Sanderson Visser believed the crowd was getting tired of seeing me fight men my own size and species. He is making me fight real spirits and monsters now. Tonight was a giant. And there are more yet to come."

I suddenly felt guilty adorning Visser's expensive robe. It had obviously been given to me out of guilt: the man had known what he had planned for my husband and half expected it to be a funeral gift.

"You're bleeding!" I exclaimed, seeing a cut on Kai's shoulder. I began to remove the warrior's black shirt in order to see how long and deep the wound was.

"It is superficial," he said but his shirt was completely off before his protest could stop me.

"It still looks sore and angry," I commented. Turning around, I went to my corner where I had stashed something safely away.

Spinning around, once it had been fetched, I caught Kai with his eyes on my rear. He had been studying it with interest while I had been bending over and now blushed at having been discovered. Shyly I returned with a small bottle and cloth in my hands.

"That is new," he commented.

"I found this small alcohol bottle left on the floor the last time I was taken above," I said, dabbing the bit of cloth with the alcohol and pressing it into Kai's wound in order to disinfect it.

"No," he said, as he cringed from the sting of the alcohol meeting his torn flesh. "I meant the robe."

I frowned. "Visser gave it to me. It was what was in the parcel this noon. He thought I would be wearing it to your funeral."

Kai looked into my face. "And take my wife as his own while I was in the ground?"

I looked into Kai's small eyes and held no hope of reading into them whether he was making a remark in jest or not. Our eyes still locked, I decided to test the waters by lowering my head and kissing his still weeping cut. I tasted alcohol, blood and salt. Kai's hand shot out gently and took light hold of my arm as he rose to his feet and pushed me back by an inch. "It was a joke, Erin of Snaefell," he informed me gently. "Ours is a marriage of covenience. Nothing more."

His words spoke one truth, but the hoarseness of his voice betrayed another. My arm still in his grasp, my hand still had enough freedom to press against his broad and striking chest. My other hand came to explore it as well. They ran over it in the same blatant appreciation they had earlier shown the robe of silk I was now adorning. Kai held his breath, taken off guard by my touch.

"You are right," I agreed, taking my free hand away suddenly and causing the man to breath once more.

Kai released his hold on my arm and I was then free to bring it to the tie of my robe.

"We have yet to consummate our union, Kai of the Ako Domain," I declared as I loosened my robe and let it fall from off my pale, smooth shoulders and on to the floor at my feet.

I stood before Kai, completely exposed to his eyes that swiftly ran over my body as my hands had done with his torso. I was hoping that my girth would not disturb the man. And from the way he studied my body with a hunger he was struggling to hold back it was clear that he did not find my large size repulsive. His eyes lingered on my overly large breasts and I could feel his stare like lightning striking to between my round thighs and deep inside my private space, where, in return, it quickly shot back to my chest where my nipples were becoming hard.

"Let us choose this present opportunity," I said as I pressed against his skin, my naked body against his half naked one.

My lips were close to his, lightly brushing them and I could feel the hardness of his own arousal pressed against the skin on my inner thigh. All that was keeping me from feeling his own flesh was the piece of black material, worn to thinness from time and use. My hands went to his ass and felt the swell of each cheek, cupping them and enjoying their fullness and the deep crack between them. My breasts were pressed flat against his chest but their own fullness made them overflow bounifully to the side. Kai's cock twitched in response revealling more passion and reply than any other part of the stoic warrior.

He moved his head back before, I could move my lips nearer to his than a mere brushing.

"Erin," he whispered as his penis continued its unfettered spasming. "I cannot _love_ you and I refuse to _use_ you."

"Maybe I _wish_ to be used," I proclaimed as my hand grasped his grateful member. Standing on the tips of my toes, I leaned forward and upwards to steal the kiss he had prevented me from completing. While I deepened the kiss, my hand squeezed Kai's cock and my fingers and palm suddenly became wet as some kind of liquid spurted out of it and seeped out of the clothing.

To my shock and pleasure, Kai began to kiss me back forcefully, as he pulled on my long hair from behind. The blood from his wound smearing on to my chest, my husband grabbed me and threw me on to the matress. My legs spread as I felt a pulsating sensation between them and a cool bit of liquid dribbling out from where I had destroyed my maiden hood. Kai's mouth clamped down around my nipple and began to suck, an action which sent a ripple of blissful sensation down between my legs again where the pressure was building. My other breast soon felt his fingers squeezing my tingling nipple and I began to grind my crotch against his stomach. I cried out as something happened down below and my whole body suddenly convulsed.

"Kai!" KAI!" I screamed, no longer having to fake the noises I associated with the act of sex.

Unfortunately, just as my earlier breathing had startled Kai from admiring my chest, whatever had happened to me, as wonderful as it was, similarly jarred him from continuing to make love to me. Propping himself up on the palms of his hands, Kai gazed down at me panting beneath him and appeared to realize that it was only I, his foreign wife, and not his beloved Mika he was offering his body to.  
I wriggled my chest at him hoping to entice him to carry on, rubbing my knee against his leaking but still unspent cock as I felt even more liquid spilling out from it, but he refused. Getting to his knees, the man returned to his former state of reserve.

"I am sorry," he apologized. "But this can never go any farther, Erin of Snaefell. I am in love with another.

Crying, I hastily covered myself with a bedsheet. I went to stand and head for another area in the underground where we lived but Kai held up a hand and stopped me.

"The mattress is yours. I shall sleep elsewhere."

"No," I said beseechingly. "We can share it as before."

He looked at me with pain. "I am sorry. That is no longer possible: You take a ruse too seriously."

Kai turned and left me, walking to a far corner of the room where I knew he was meditating again and waiting for his penis to lose its arousal and return to its unexcited state.

I turned away, refusing to face him, my body having obviously reached some kind of climax, but my soul not being anywhere close to following suit.


	10. Treigit (Abandoned)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After our intimate moment, Kai distances himself from me as the atmosphere becomes tense between us. When one night offers my husband the chance for escape, however, he takes it, leaving me alone and vulnerable in Dejima.

After the thwarted attempt at consummating our marriage, the relationship between Kai and myself was strained and uncomfortable. We shared the dungeon together but we had a new visitor which had chosen to stay with us: distrust. Kai no longer seemed to either trust himself or me. After momentarily abandoning his usual kind detatchment for a more impassioned physicality he had decided to clothe himself in it once more; only this time with a coolness replacing his previous warmth. I cursed myself for the change and my foolish attempt to seduce him. He loved his precious Mika and not the wife he had only taken in order to keep his promise to protect her. At least, before, Kai had been my dear friend. In the attempt to make him something more I had ruined even that.

I attempted to apologize one night while he meditated with his back towards me in his new favored corner, which was far away from the mattress he had declared could be for my sole use. It was shortly before he was brought upstairs for yet another fight. These days found him seeking private contemplation more and more often and discussions with me far and far less.

"I am sorry Kai," I whispered. "I desire your friendship; I did not mean to spoil it."

I saw tenseness claim his shoulders at the sound of my voice and apology as if he loathed being reminded of my presence. He was on his knees and refused to face me even after I had spoken. It might have been my imagination but I believed that by addressing him whilst he was seeking communing with himself, or the personal philosophy which he believed in, I had only won more irritation from the man. Kai half turned his head but refused to look at me.

"It is all right. I am still your friend."

"But one not so close?"

Silence. I watched his shoulders rising and falling from each breath he took. "As close as any that I cannot love can get. You can be no more to me, Erin, than any of the samurai which served for Lord Asano. My affection for you is not of a romantic nature. Though, now I know for certain that you _wish_ it to be."

I remembered his member pressing urgently into the skin on my thigh, his lips on the soft flesh of my breasts and then encircling one's pink peak and thought his words seemed suddenly a shield he was using to protect himself and nothing more.

"For a man whom seeks to find enlightenment by meditating most of the day away, instead of risking temptation, your penchent for self deception is startling," I scoffed and began to hold my legs, resting my chin between the knees while I pouted.

Kai turned fully around at my words, glaring at me from across the candlelit dungeon. "What do you mean, Erin of Snaefell?"

I met his eyes as my chin continued to press against my knees. "I am not a samurai to you; I am a _woman_. And therein stems the problem that has thrown us far from friendship. You desire no woman save Mika Asano. Or that is what you have told yourself. For most of your life it was that way. Now that you find yourself attracted to another, you throw false shields of brotherly affection at her so you can hold the memory of your lost love to you and retain your own vision and ideal of your love for her. That was not brotherly affection that was hot and wet against my thigh that night when you almost surrendered to your lust for me and not your precious Mika!"

Kai rose to his feet, forsaking his meditation, and walked towards the mattress where I sat, hugging my plump legs.

"If you honor our friendship, you will take your words back and never say them again," he warned.

"I value my love for you and your affection for me enough to not taint them with a lie," I said, gazing up into his face with a twinge of defiance.

"The body possessed its own mind that night," Kai commented. "That it spoke for me without my own inclination is nature's fault and not my own."

I lay suddenly with my back on the mattress, thrusting my breasts forward. Looking to his black trousers and the dormant cock that lay beneath them, the part of Kai that I longed to make better acquaintance of, I extended my leg suddenly and began to massage where it lay sleeping with the soft, smooth balls of my toes. "Well, pray tell me Kai of the Ako Domain...how can I make it speak to me once more?"

Kai's hand immediatly shot out and grabbed my foot by the ankle but not before I had felt movement stirring against his thinning fabric.

"It has lost its tongue," he said.

"Let me find it for you," I suggested, moving the foot which was entrapped in his hand a few times in a circular motion.

"It finds its voice with only _one_ ," he commented, pushing my leg forcefully backwards so it was bent at the knee. As he did, the skirt of my dress shifted and I knew that my lower region was exposed to the man. His eyes darted to the bare skin and hair there and the curtains of flesh which hid my entrance.

I looked down to his groin and saw that his malehood had decided to join in the conversation after all.

"Your eyes and what they see are luring it to drop its silence," I commented.

"Your own are seeing, perhaps, what they only _want_ to," he remarked.

"I _see_ only a man who is afraid to find solace in his most willing wife, while his own love is soon to become the wife of another," I reasoned somewhat insensitively.

My words awoke an anger in Kai and he pushed my leg away and threw himself on to the bed, grabbing my head in an uncharacteristic moment of rage. Apparently whatever I was to the man did not sit well with his usual reserve. I appeared to be the catalyst to provoke him into heated action of different kinds; one able to make him lose his mask with the swiftness a lion used to conquer its prey. I was about to apologize but stopped myself knowing it would be a lie. I wanted this, had _craved_ for some moment of passion from the man after days of his cool avoidance of me. If it was linked more to wrath than lust it seemed to make little difference to my blind heart.

"She will never be Kira's wife!" he hissed into my face.

"But I am yours now, Kai," I said wrapping a leg around his and using it to stroke his buttocks. "You cannot revoke that. And would you dare tell Mika that you are now sworn to another?"

Jealousy urged me to say those words, my envy for a woman I had never seen. Angry regret made Kai pull on my hair, turning my chin upwards.

"Hey! Save it for the ring!" we heard a familiar voice say and turned to find Carl staring at us in impatient disapproval.

We had been so lost in our private and heated little war that we had failed to notice we were suddenly not alone.

My husband glared at me for what felt a small eternity and then rose from off of the mattress. I watched his strong back walking away from me and towards the open grate and rope which cast a square patch on the ground. Once standing in that light, his shadow reaching towards me as he now refused to do, he half-turned again and offered these words to me, the last ones I would ever hear him speak before his death at his own hands.

"I should not have married you, Erin of Snaefell," he remarked calmly and cruelly.

I watched him take the rope into his strong hands, climbing it into a night which would not only offer the usual fighting but an unexpected reunion and flight also.

Knowing that the honeymoon was now officially over; if it had ever truly begun, I sat up, returned my chin to my knees and pouted some more.

* * *

Time having chastised me, I sat later listening to the fight, I could not wait for it to finish. I felt horrible remorse for my treatment of Kai. My lust and possessiveness had claimed me and I longed to apologize to him. My emotions, which were like a storm at sea inside of my soul, did not find any relief when the noises above me grew louder and the calls ascended to a level of energy the fighting pit had never encountered. At least, not since the night I had almost known the pleasure of Kai being inside of me. Not knowing what was going on above me, terrified beyond anything I had never known before, I started to call out Kai's name until I was hoarse an act which preceded the return to a more quiet state in the pit. Even then, however, I kept to my wailing like the sirens of old which had lured sailors and captains to their deaths and thus had terrified my grandfather when he was a boy on the Isle.

When the grate finally opened, I ran towards it, desperately wanting to see my husband. Only Carl fell from the grate that night. He dropped down the long rope, threw his muscled arms about my waist and then was pulled up to above level, presumably by his fellow workers. My heart was racing and I was sure that the small squat man holding on to me could feel it. On the upper level now, I was thrown to the boards but rose to my feet and immediately ran forward towards the fighting arena before Carl and the other men could stop me. I gasped as I intook the destruction before me. A battle other than the usual nightly one had obviously taken place there.

"KAI!" I cried out but saw only Sanderson Visser walking towards me across the filthy floor.

"He is gone Erin," the fighting pit's owner informed. "He ran off with some man that I was informed was a comrade of his when he was Lord Asano's foundling. Some Ohji Yoshiro or the like."

Oishi Yoshio.

I stared at the open doorway a few feet away, picturing my husband finally regaining his freedom in the company of the man whom had ridiculed him for so many years. Kai's salvation had come to him in the form of an enemy and now he had escaped in the hope, no doubt, of facing his real one: Lord Kira.

But he had left me alone and vulnerable in Dejima in doing so.

"You have been most rudely abandoned," Visser was saying, staring at me in a most licentious manner. "But what can you expect? He is a beast, a monster. He did not even extend to me the courtesy of a farewell or recompense for the damage that he has caused my respectable establishment."

The man held his arms out, motioning to the destruction Kai had left in his wake. Then Visser turned his lusty gaze on me once more. "Of course, as his wife, I am sure you would be willing to pay for your husband's ingratitude somehow.."

Looking at Sanderson Visser, I understood the full offer he was extending. My _companionship_ and _favors_ in return for his looking after me while I remained in Dejima. It was a tad bit more preferable to what my fate would have been with Lord Hisaki but not by much.

The image of Kai refusing to look at me and the knowledge that it was his intent (or had he merely forgotten me?) when he fled for it to be the last communication and meeting between us flashed across my memory. 

_"I should not have married you, Erin of Snaefell."_

But he _had_ , I thought to myself.

And he was still my husband even if he did not _wish_ it.

Hastily, I turned away from the man whom wished to _care_ for me and ran to the door and out into the dark and dangerous Dejima night, leaving Visser alone to contemplate how his lost fighter's ingratitude was shared by his now absent wife as well.


	11. Oayllagh (Guide)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I find an unexpected ally willing to take me to the Ako Domain to find Kai, whom has gone to save Asano Mika and avenge Lord Asano's death.

I waited until daylight to start wandering the Dejima streets. Kai and Oishi were two men well equipped to take care of themselves; I was one lone female and a foreign one at that. From the place where I sat hiding in the shadows of a building, yearning for the first glimmer of sun, I watched as the various traders came to the structure and sought entrance. From the sound which came out from the windows above, brought to my ears by the night wind, I knew instantly what the men sought. Inside of the building men and women willingly committed the act that Kai and myself had feigned for months. I suffered a pang of sorrowful mouring that the man was no longer with me to imitate making love as well as envy that the women inside were being known by men whom wanted them as Kai had not wanted me.

When the sun finally began its bright journey to the sky over Dejima, I could finally begin to roam the trading post with a bit more confidence. Carefully, I walked the artificial island's pathways, trying to approach anyone whom I believed would help take me to where I longed to go, which was not home to my beloved Isle of Man but was back to being beside the man whom I loved. Seeing one stranger that seemed less threatening, a smile on his large round head framed by his golden tresses, I approached him shyly. "Sir," I said, earning his attention away from the rope he was tethering to a wide post. "Could you possibly take me to the Ako Domain?"

The man finished tying the knot and turned around to lean on the post to study me. "Will your husband be paying for the fare over?"

"I am going to my husband," I answered. "He is there waiting for me. I have just arrived in Japan following a long trip over."

"Will you be paying me for the trip then yourself?"

Cursing myself I knew the two possible choices I was most likely to receive when I answered his question and prepared myself. "No. I have no funds."

"Then you have no way with _my_ aid to the mainland or your final destination and husband either," he stated, suddenly losing a little of his pleasantness. I comforted myself that he had not suggested another form of payment from me, at least, as I had feared that he might.

"Please," I began my futile attempt to persuade him. "I implore you; it is your Christian duty to reunite a wife with the husband she has longed for these past several months."

The boatman laughed with much mirth but he remained even less moved than before to help me. "And why did he separate from you then and send no one to fetch you? I think his love for you is less then your love for him and he is glad to be rid of you. Having successfully shaken my own wife, and holding no desire for any sod to help bring her back to me, I will not show you any charity save to wish you a good day and suggest you find a new husband."

And with that, he turned his back on me and would offer me no more glimpse of his pleasant and deceptive countenance.

Left to search Dejima once more, to my horror, I almost ran into Adelbert Van Dijk somewhere near the burnt remains of the house where he had brought me to be appraised by Lord Hisaki. The man did not see me, though, and I quickly darted into the space between two buildings, falling to the ground behind some crates, which straw was leaking out from, to insure that he would not catch a glimpse of a woman whom had once been his cargo. Seeing him pass by, I made to stand but weary, hungry, cold and sorrowful I fell to the dirt and straw covered ground and held my head as I started to weep. I was alone in a strange land for the first time and had lost my husband, a man whom did not love me but whom I loved passionately in return, regardless of his supposed indifference. 

I knew that I should have been joyful for his escape and the chance of his reunion with the woman he did love, Asano Mika, but our last meeting and his bitter profession that he never should have married me, was a shadow forever inside of my mind. Even if I could find safe passage back to my place on the Isle, the look of hatred in his eyes, and the fact that I had offended him, would haunt me for the rest of my life. I could not go home without apologizing to the man first and repairing his feelings of kindness and affection for me. Still crying into my dirt smeared hands, I failed to hear the sound of footfalls until it was too late.

"Tsk tsk," I heard a familiar voice say. "Tears are not worth much in Dejima, Erin of Snaefell. Dry them before they target you for being weak and try to take you without a given price."

Freeing my face from the cup made by my hands, I found Carl standing before me, a mischievous smile on his face. I rose to my feet and backed into the wall which put the man's face on level with my chest. "I am not going back," I hissed. "I will not be Sanderson's mistress while I am married to another man."

"I will not force it on you either," Carl said with a shrug. "He merely sent us all out to search for you. Besides, I was more or less merely concerned with the welfare of half of my favorite lovebirds than I ever was of returning her to the likes of a bastard like Sanderson Visser."

There was a kindness in the man's eyes I could see far better when it was touched by the sunlight and not hidden by the darkness of the fighting pit. His smile was warm as well, genuine as opposed to the man whom had refused to be my guide without payment.

"Please," I begged Carl. "Can you help me find a way off of Dejima and to the Ako Domain?"

Carl laughed and walked away. Running after him, I lowered my head to speak to the small statured man while I followed closely behind him until I was keeping his stride and walking by his side. "I beseech you! Kai and I fought before he fled. I only wish to find him to apologize before I return to my birthland,"

I stated, attempting the truth this time.

"You two put on quite the show for us all," Carl said.

"What do you mean?"

"Your act at lovemaking...it was _close_ to being real."

"You...you knew?" I stammered in shock at the revelation that Visser's worker had known the deception the whole time.

"Kai is a man of buried passion," Carl explained. "I watched him fight night after night and then return to his cell to be so quiet he might as well have been just another damn mouse hiding in the whole place. How could I not smell something rotten when he gave himself lustfully to the first pretty lass we threw in with him? The rest of Visser's crew might have fell for it but my little mind got to thinking that Kai might just be helping out a poor little caged animal like himself."

"Why did you pretend to gawk at us all of those times?" I countered.

"Who was pretending, girl? A peep show is still a peep show and I got my thrills for free. So, thank you."

I held myself, disappointed that the man had seen that my couplings with Kai had been nothing more than an elaborate erotic show for him and the others in the fighting pit. Glancing up at my probably sour expression, Carl seemed to be able to discern the reason for my pout and I gazed down at him quickly when he laughed. "He did come to enjoy your company though, Erin, so do not be too harsh on yourself," he tried to help soothe my wounded pride. "Possibly more than made him comfortable to like himself for."

"How could you tell?" I asked.

"Oh," Carl smiled widely. "He was getting quite good at the charade the more you were forced to do it. He was finding a certain fondness and lust for his wife. Pillar of honor and chastity that our lost warrior was, he was finding himself not so immune to your abudantly fleshy delights, my girl."

The small man reached around and patted my bottom.

"I beg you to keep your hands to yourself!" I chastised him.

Carl shrugged. "Tis life! The ones you want to touch you never do and the ones you deplore the touch of cannot keep their hands to themselves. I'm far better than Visser, though, girl if you see fit."

"I find you pleasant enough but..."

"Your heart is spoken for?"

I didn't look at him as I replied, "Yes, even if he does not want it."

"Kai has gone to stop Lord Kira's wedding to his beloved Mika. The news of the union is all over Dejima," Carl informed me. "Oishi and he have gone to avenge their dead lord's betrayal. If they join him it is just as well in my sight. Grieve but do not mourn too much for a fool."

"It is _foolish_ to avenge a man's death whom you loved and whom cared for you?" I argued.

Another shrug from my companion's slight shoulders. "Asano is dead and the dead do not return. This whole concept of Japanese honor and fealty...I do not understand it all. Care for yourself and let the dead bury the dead; as your Kai will be if he intends to save his woman's virtue."

A new need came to life inside of me at the man's words. A fierce and burning desire to protect Kai from the danger and subsequent harm that he was facing surged through me alongside the hope I held of apologizing to him. He might have abandoned me in Dejima when faced with the chance to rescue Mika but my choice was, in return, to save him if I could. "I wish to be by his side when he fights against Kira," I stated resolutely.

Carl burst into a bigger fit of laughter than I had ever seen him give in to before. "You are no Onna-Bugeisha, Erin of Snaefell. The ronin will not allow an untrained and obviously _alien_ woman to fight by their side and I can only picture the embarrassment on Kai's face if you even suggested as much."

"I do not wish to be a widow," I sighed.

"You cannot stop it. Go back to Snaefell; Kai's dead already. It is how the dumb son of a bitch desires it. Even if he and the other ronin manage to defeat Kira, he will have gone against the decree to not seek vengeance. Then the sole question will be if they kill them all in dishonor or allow the group to perform seppuku."

I shivered at the word, remembering Kai's explanation of it. "Please my friend, my _only_ friend in Dejima...please help me find my way to Kai," I pleaded.

Carl kept walking, deaf to my pleas for it was nothing more than nonsense to him. In desperation, I dashed in front of the man to prevent him from taking another step. I placed a hand on his shoulder. "Please...I need to tell him I am sorry. I cannot return to my home until I have shared those final last words with the man whom compromised his loyalty for the woman he loved in order to protect me."

Carl tilted his head back and I assumed it was to look up into my beseeching eyes. It was not them, however, which in the end convinced him. "Now how can I tell you no, Erin of Snaefell? Certainly not when you offer to me a fine view of that magnificent chest of yours!" he exclaimed.

I blushed and backed away, folding my arms across my large bosom.

"I'll tell Sanderson Visser to screw himself and take you to Kai myself. And if the fool is still alive, I will ask him what on earth demon possessed him to leave such a fine pair of teats, which were always at hand to comfort him after a hard night's worth of violence, and rush off to his death instead!" the randy Dutch dwarf announced on the crowded Dejima streets.

Rolling my eyes, I shook my head and sighed knowing that Carl had already given himself the answer moments before and a talk with Kai would only confirm it. Twas life, after all; the one he wanted to touch him never could. And the one he merely suffered couldn't keep her chubby hands to herself.


	12. Chiamble (Temple)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I arrive at the Sengakuji temple too late to save Kai.
> 
> Maybe.

Carl and I were on the Japanese mainland soon enough but even this seemed like a small eternity. If Kai was determined on saving Mika and taking on Lord Kira's empire, I longed to be by his side as quickly as possible. Sensing my impatience as we traversed on foot to our destination, my travelling companion was oftentimes amused by my contant demands for us to hurry our pace and the increasing limitations of my overweight body, which, while it could be quite quick and occassionally graceful when needed, was now being thwarted by the length of our journey, our inability to procure a horse in order to ease the growing strain on our bodies and the terrain we were travelling itself.

Especially since I was barefooted still.

"Erin, girl," my Dutch friend once said as I was forced to sit down on the ground and give my bleeding feet a chance to rest. "You hurry towards a man that is wholly consumed with the salvation of another woman! What is your damned rush? Kai cares for you; I have no doubt of that. But does he care for you as much as his Mika? No. Never. She is the virtuous Madonna...you are the little, busty, lusty wench they threw in to tempt him with. Men have two sides to their hearts. One the soul governs; the other the body. He will always love his precious Mika more than thee because she is holy to him. You he loves because his cock has taken a liking to you in the closeness forced upon it. Other than that, you may be his wife but you are no better off than his sister, for he will never let his body win over the will he has spent years strengthening."

I looked away, my feelings more wounded than my feet. Turning back I glared at my Dutch dwarf friend. "But I can be by his side, at least, for support."

"And so he'd have to divide his attention in the saving of Mika _and_ his unwanted wife?" Carl laughed. "You'll get him killed all the sooner for your blasted hurry in getting to his side."

I inhaled deeply and turned my attention from him and to my bloodied soles. Seeing so much dirt caked into the cuts, and horrified by the fact that my skin was painted in a mixture of black and red, I thought of my beautiful and frustrating Kai bleeding blood of a similar shade. I was torn by wanting to help him and the knowledge that by recklessly trying to do so I would cause his death. Kai had been trained as a samurai even if he was never truly accepted by the rest of Lord Asano's men. He could take care of himself but if I arrived on the scene, thinking I could be of help to him I would be blind to the fact that there was, in truth, nothing I could do for him. I was a stranger to this land and its ways and had also spent a sheltered existence on the land which had witnessed my birth and most of my life. That was how Adelbert Van Dijk had been able to capture me after all. My naivety was endless. I had even thought that I, a plump and perfectly plain virgin, could seduce a man of beauty and self discipline from his willed celibacy and devotion to the lovely Lady Mika.

"Stupid little fool," I mumbled.

"I may be but I speak the truth," Carl said with a defiant and smug frown.

I looked at him and cursed myself. "I wasn't talking about _you_ ," I corrected his statement but found no argument from his side when he discovered the true source of my critiscm.

* * *

Our pace remained much slower after that.

I did not wish to be the noose around Kai's neck even more than I was the ball and chain about his ankle. In that time, I was given the full opportunity to study the landscape I was travelling especially the woods. I thought I heard a hum from it sometimes, trying to lure me towards it. I wondered if the Tengu were watching us from the safety of the brush and foliage. Did they know in their preternatural wisdom where we were heading and to what purpose? Kai was connected to them after all. Their lost son.

Occasionally we came across a small villiage that welcomed us and let two obvious foreigners seek a reprieve from their long journey inside of their often impoverished walls. Carl knew the language far better than I and I think he convinced them that we were husband and wife. I did not argue it as long as my companion did not seize his chance to take liberties, but enjoyed the opportunity to rest my sore legs and heal my feet for a while. Seeing them bleeding, one of our hostesses provided me with a pair of wooden sandals to make the travelling easier for me.

During one stop, my heart nearly stopped when a man brought news to the houseold that Lord Kira had been overthrown by Lord Asano's 47 ronin. The lord had been beheaded and the fallen samurais were awaiting their punishment for having gone against the decree that they should not seek vengeance. They were all sentenced to death; the only question was would they receive disgrace or honor in doing so.

"Kai," I said aloud, earning everyone's attention for it was the sole word that I had spoken since our arrival.

A flash of recognition burned in the stranger's eyes and he started to set out a string of Japanese words that I could not understand. Carl flinched for a moment and then looked down and I feared that my husband had fallen during the battle until my friend translated the information for me.

"Kai is all right," he told me. "He was with Oishi when they stormed Kira's domain during his wedding celebration to Mika. Kai saved her...he _saved_ _Mika_."  
He repeated the words as if trying to drive home the fact of whom Kai loved the most between his wife and his childhood love but I remained only relieved that the warrior was still alive. "Why did you cringe then?" I asked him when we were alone and preparing to leave, as I had pleaded him we do before Kai's sentence was carried out.

"Because I wish he had died and gotten it over with," Carl hissed. "Then you would have no hope pushing you towards certain doom. Hope is a bastard whom misleads with little regret and far less satisfaction. Now we're rushing there and the outcome will only be the same: Kai will die, you will cry and on top of it all you might make a scene between him, his beloved Mika and yourself. I do not believe that he hates you, Erin. Not simply for making him _want_ you. That only makes him hate himself. But if you do something to wound Mika in any way or if he is forced to hurt her...well then you will rightfully earn his wrath."

I swallowed and tried to absorb his words fully before touching his arm. "I do not wish for Kai's anger. Nor do I desire to hurt Mika. She will never know that the man she loves wedded another. That offers me no temptation. Kai did it to save me. It was not worth more than that. But I am loathe to let Kai die without making amends with him."

I thought of the man and the beliefs that he clung to, which I could barely comprehend. Why he would seek his death, why they would take the lives of 47 decent men, whom were merely seeking vengeance for their poorly deceived master and why they would all consider it fair to be allowed to die by their own hands and bravely disembowel themselves I could not grasp inside of my soul. Though I was only a naive, lost barmaid I did not believe I would ever understand. Perhaps that was what made Mika a better mate for him: having lived under similiar instruction and beliefs herself they suited each other by adhering to the same practices which only confused me.

But it did not mean that I loved Kai any less or that I was prepared to let him go without a mending and a final farewell between us.

"I only wish to see my husband once before his death...to apologize and to earn his forgiveness," I whispered. "Kai protected me when I needed it. He was my sole friend when I was alone. I cannot let him leave this world without knowing how much I care for him and am grateful for all he has done for me. Nor can I rest until he has forgiven me. I cannot stop seeing his face before me at our last meeting. And I do not wish to be forever haunted by it for the rest of my life as well."

Carl studied me and then began to swear enough to make any aboard the ship Adelbert had consigned to bring me to Japan blush. "Okay, girl," he stated. "But when your heart is broken, do me two favors: try not to cry in front of me and do not complain about it afterwards."

I nodded but the former was a hopeless affair since by the time we reached the site designated for Kai's and the other ronin's execution, he had already been granted the honorable death of seppuku and my heart was broken beyond solace.

* * *

We could tell that something had occurred, my companion and I, as we reached the district where the rogue samurai were being held. Upon questioning one local, a boy of around ten, we were told that the 47 ronin were at the Sengakuji temple receiving their punishment for the seige against Lord Kira and his men. He looked at us in the strange fascination most locals reserved for foreigners. Then he said something which earned a gob of spit to fly from Carl's mouth before we hastily walked away. I felt in an apathetic daze, numb even as the dwarf grabbed my arm and led me away. I was thinking of Kai about to plunge the sharpened blade into his flesh and how I could never earn his forgiveness when that insurmountable wall between this world and the next had been placed between us.

"What was that for?" I asked.

"Rude little brat asked if we were here for the halfbreed Kai," he hissed at me in a whisper. "Only he didn't word it quite so pleasantly."

Remembering the pain Kai had experienced due to his mingled ancestry, never being accepted because he was obviously of half European descent, I turned around and tried to spit at the boy as well but found it flying back and hitting me squarely in the face. Tired and devastated, knowing with agony what awaited me at the temple, I found the first tears falling from my eyes and mixing with the other fluid from my body. They seemed some crude illustration of whatever insult the young village local had cruelly bestowed on my husband whom was by now probably dead.

"Oh, now you promised, you silly woman," Carl chastised as he looked up into my face. But his tone was soft and his arm suddenly around me was gentle while he held me comfortingly to him, earning my big left breast against his cheek for his kindness.

* * *

Lords and Ladies filed out of the Sengakuji Temple as if they were departing from a castle where a show had just been performed for their benefit and I noticed with a weeping contempt that they had seen fit to dress up to witness a ritualistic mass suicide. As if there was any honor to be found in the senseless to me act. My temper soaring, I wished to run at them and scream in my foreign and therefore undesirable tongue that they dared to delight in violence and barbarism under a cloak of honor and a false display of serenity! Oh how my ire was flaring and my need great to unleash my fiery Manx passion in the face of their incomprehensible detatchment. But Carl grabbed me, however, and pulled me behind a wall blocking us from the seppuku attendees eyes before I could even be seen.

"Don't be a fool, Erin!" he hissed in his own anger, covering my mouth with his full sized hand. "It won't do you any good. You seek to beat your fists against centuries of tradition and regiment. They would look at you as the barbarian with your attitude and in their land they would be absolutely right. I see why you attracted Kai besides your bosom though. You are passionate as opposed to his continual attempts to hide the workings of his own heart. He must have seen in you a blessed form of release, though, he was too damnably contained to seize what fate threw into his ill used lap. The both of you...you were far better suited to each other than him and his too similar Mika. You would have formed that symbol for their religion: black and white, dark and light and all that nonsense."

I was crying again from my grief and his praise. Sensing I was about to heed his words and be a good, quiet, complacent widow, Carl tore his hand away from my mouth and kept his vision on the temple and its continued expulsion of its audience now that the show was over. I peeked past his waist, studying the women and trying to discern which one was my Kai's own Mika. Spotting one women, I knew her instantly to be my rival. She was beautiful and of the right age but it was more the sorrow in her eyes, above all else, that told me she was Lord Asano's daughter. In their depths, I could see a loss and desperation, a sadness which lay on her like a shroud of death. In the end, I knew it solely because it was what I was suffering as well.

Only after it appeared that everyone had left and the sky was darkening did Carl finally move and motion me to follow him. "Here girl," he whispered and we stole into the temple like two spirits looking for an exorcism. It did not take us long to find him either. The scent of blood was strong enough to lead us to the execution site and my legs were weak as we walked forward. Lying before us at the temple's heart there were 46 sheets bearing the bodies of 46 ronin. I saw in horror both blood and guts spilling out from their stomachs and on to their white robes.

"White...why are they white?" I asked, thinking how the color only made the gore stand out all the more.

"White represents death here," Carl educated me. "Different country...Might as well be a different realm altogether. You see for yourself, you might as well kiss your hopes of bidding Kai a farewell. He is already gone. Give your apology to the sky and pray God to send it to your departed husband, wherever he be."

Ignoring his words, I ran by him, walking amongst the corpses in search of Kai. Carl was at my side instantly hissing as was becoming common for him. "They will be back soon to bury them all! Let's go before we receive their fate for tresspassing."

Unheeding his words yet again, I searched the faces of the dead, until seeing one familiar and more precious one lying with the strangers, I ran to him. The man's eyes looked to the side where I knelt beside him yet they did not see me. They saw nothing anymore or nothing they could speak of.

"Oh Kai," I whispered, weeping and touching his face as I lay down next to him.

"We must go!" Carl stated as loudly as he dared.

"I am sorry...so sorry," I said staring into Kai's unfocused and unseeing eyes and gently stroked my fingers against his face, both the skin which bore his dark beard and that above it, pale and smooth.

"Erin!"

_"I should not have married you, Erin of Snaefell."_

The words stung me now more than ever, starkly contrasting the samurai while he was living with the dead shell before me, and I was compelled to take him into my arms as I began to cry more furiously. "Kai...Kai...Kai...My beloved protector...my husband, my love."

I gasped as his blood began to seep into my clothing and touch the skin underneath it. Oh it was not fair! His body was cooling but his blood was still hot; I felt if only I could push it back into the man he would live and breath once more. As I tried vainly, I felt a part of my friend's organs protruding from the cut which had taken his life and I was broken completely.

"NO!" I wailed and sat up, pulling Kai's body towards me on the sheet he was lying on. My wails grew in intensity as I desperately, and with much sorrow, clasped my husband's body and kissed his cold lips. I did not care as I realized I was being covered in the man I loved's blood, wishing I could join him. But even then my hope of reconciliation and absolution would never happen. Kai was dead and we were separated by our faiths. There would be no hope of my meeting him again, not if God in His mercy blessed each with the fate they desired. Kai would be reborn as some other beast or man while I was in the kingdom of Heaven with my God and Savior.

"Leave him be!" Carl hissed after hearing a sound but finding out it was on the other side of the temple's walls. "Return to your Isle! Or go back to Visser, whom has some fondness for you and may forgive you for abandoning him! Kai no longer can. He is dead. The dead stay dead. There is nothing to be done; _NOBODY_ , under Heaven to bring him back! Dead men stay dead and only the living ones matter!"

The strange whispering from the forest came to me again as if in beckoning.

Rocking Kai's body back and forth, I bit my lip strongly as Adelbert Van Dijk anf Kai's tales of the Tengu filled my mind with that singular emotion that my dwarf companion loathed:

Hope.

"No," I said with determination. "Not all the dead remain dead...not in these forests."

Carl looked at me cradling Kai and could only curse as he read my thoughts. "You can count yourself as dead then too. The Tengu have little patience for men."

"Good thing I am a _woman_ then," I stated in return. "And if they are to kill me I can only pray that I will meet Kai's soul in passing long enough to offer to him my apology at last."

I kissed the top of the dead man's head as I pressed his face to my breasts, his lips grazing the top of them as once they had done while he was still counted among the living.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so that brings us to the end of the film 47 Ronin. The rest of this is an unofficial sequel of sorts.
> 
> Speaking of endings, and this is irrelevant. I was thinking about something a friend I had once said. Note how I said "had" :/ . She used to claim she was bullied in high school even though she admitted to constantly harassing a girl in the washroom...anyway she said once that "Carrie" had the best ending ever, regarding the infamous prom scene. I don't agree with that although I never said anything to her. 
> 
> First off, what Carrie does at the prom doesn't technically happen at the end. There's lots of stuff after that. Most importantly, though, what Carrie does at that prom damns her. She becomes the monster and freak everyone sees her as. There is no hope of her proving them wrong. No big moment where they feel jealous over her or shame for how they treated her. They die believing they were right. Carrie didn't really get revenge. It was hollow. 
> 
> Which brings us to the real ending of the film which is just sad. Carrie kills her own mom and in guilt goes to the closet, which represents to her a guilty, repentant and sorrowful state, before the whole thing is brought down on her. That's Carrie's end. Pain. Was a few minutes of slaughter worth it? 
> 
> And then the other ending sees the one girl whom felt sorry for Carrie now living in fear of her. 
> 
> Umm...if that's the best ending I'm really confused.
> 
> What I think is one of the best endings is, and note how I say "one of" cuz saying the best is always dangerous, "The Man with Two Brains." Honestly as a chubby girl that does it for me. And the film is just mad fun too. It and Carl Reiner's other masterpiece "The Jerk." "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" has its moments too. At least, that puppy scene. But to any other chubby girls, I highly recommend "The Man With Two Brains." I was gonna describe it but I don't want to spoil it.
> 
> And hey, Keanu, I haven't forgotten about you...if you want to relive that scene with me...I'd love to. As long as I don't hurt your back! ;D <3


	13. Keyll (Forest)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I venture into the Tengu forest alone to beg the demons to save Kai.

Carl agreed to help me steal Kai's body from out of the Temple. Though he would not help me with the body until it had been properly wrapped to prevent the organs from falling out from the cut my husband had made in order to disembowl himself in the act of ritual suicide. I struggled with my beloved's corpse, smearing the dress that I was wearing in his blood while trying to push the protruding organs routinely back inside of him. The smell of blood and guts was strong and I kept wretching in sickness and sorrow.

"Tis is the grossest sight I have ever had the misfortune to see," Carl commented in fascinated awe as he watched Kai's corpse falling down upon me, yet again, and my limbs flailing beneath him. We must have certainly looked like some grotesque parody of the act of love all bathed in blood.

"If you helped you would not have to watch!" I snapped.

"Why? He's your husband not mine," Carl said, folding his arms and turning the other way.

I managed to crawl out from Kai and resumed my effort, knowing it would not be long before the grave diggers returned. With a purpose given intensity by seeing Kai's small, brown unseeing eyes, I finally managed to roll my man up in the white and bloody shroud. Looking down at myself I saw my dress dyed red and the blood, warm and sticky, covering both it and my hands.

"He will not thank you for this act or grave robbery," Carl commented, coming to stand by my side, the task now completed. "They are likely now to remove his name from the list of the other ronin. He valued, most likely, the chance to be buried with them."

I kept my eyes on the sheet which contained my beloved's corpse. "Yes, he will," I argued. "When he is alive and reunited with his Mika he will see that this is for the best."

Carl grunted. "The Tengu might not fulfill your request, Erin. They hate humans."

"Then why did they raise Kai?" I countered. "There must be some bond there, some trace of affection."

The dward Dutchman waved the thought away but helped me as we quietly carried Kai away from his intended resting place. Though the body was still heavy, not lessened in any significant way by it being handled by two and not one, I smiled to myself. The Tengu _would_ resurrect the ronin and he would thank me for it when he was alive once more. Having already been punished, he could then live free of the guilt if he would have suffered if he had avoided it. The shame of bringing him back would be mine alone and I would simply add that apology to my regret over having tested him so sorely in the cell we shared beneath the fighting pit in Dejima. Then, hopefully, I could convince him and Mika to let go of ancient but foolish ideas of tradition and make a life with one another. It would wound me to my core to see the two childhood friends together but I could happily return to my Snaefell with a broken heart knowing my Kai was alive and reunited with his true love.

God would make sure that everything would work out, I told myself, carrying my dead husband by his feet. It had already gone so horribly wrong already anything else _had_ to be an improvement.

* * *

Carl bought a horse from a merchant on the outskirts of the village. When the man looked at the bloodied sheet and my equally bloody dress, the explanation was given that my guide and I had already formed in anticipation of curious glances or questions. We had been travelling through the Ako domain when we had been attacked. The thief had forced himself upon me and my husband had come upon the crime, killing the man in the process. We were now taking the man's body back to his own village to make his family bear his disgrace. This last invocation of honor and punishment moved the merchant enough to give us a horse for what I suspected was a far lower price than he would have requested if we had simply been accosted travellers.

"The customs are so strange," I sighed, holding Kai's cool body closer to me for a moment.

"What do you expect?" Carl said, as he walked beside the black horse I was sitting on with Kai's body slung over it before me. "Small island on its own in many ways. They developed a way to hold on to some dignity while also allowing themselves the chance to be the barbarians we all be under our skins. They just found a more pretty way to go about it."

"It doesn't matter how pretty it is," I remarked. "Cruel acts remain cruel. And keeping two people in love apart for appearances, class, titles and lineage seems absurd!"

"But if they hadn't you never would have met your fine Kai now would you have, Erin of Snaefell?"

I sighed and touched the bloody sheet by my knees.

"That Dutch fool Adelbert Van Dijk brought you here. That was savage too."

"Yes. I suppose," I conceded. "And he masked it just as well. Perhaps you are right. Most men are barbarians underneath. But not my Kai."

He snorted. "Maybe he hid it better than the rest because the monster inside of him is worse. Give no man credit for he will surely prove you wrong."

I frowned. If I wagered on the decency of one human soul it would be the man whom had gone so far as to take Christian vows with a foreign woman he did not love just in order to keep her safe.

The dwarf looked up at me and cursed. "Here we are discussing the evil of men and you are off willingly marching towards something much worse: the evil of _demons_."

"Are they really that bad?" I asked. I had heard from Kai about their strange ways, his having been so close to them and while he had never painted them in too pure a light he had not depicted them as the raping monsters Van Dijk had. But now I longed for another side of the story to prepare myself for the truth of what I was about to face.

"The Tengu?" Carl looked up at me. "All I've heard is talk. And if Kai had not possessed something otherworldly about him, that spoke of his years spent with 'em, I could still be counted amongst the unbelievers. But the stories vary...I suppose they abide by the rules of honor here too and are like men in their ways: some are good, some are bad. I just pray you encounter the former and not the latter."

"Me too," I whispered and touched Kai again. He was still so cold. It was a sensation closer to his attitude towards me at our parting than our meeting and I sent up another prayer as well that the Tengu could bring back the warmth into his body and I could say the right words or perform the right act to bring the warmth back inside of the man's heart for me before we parted forever.

* * *

When we reached the Tengu forest's edge, I hopped down from the horse and Carl looked at me sadly as he offered me his apology and farewell. "This ends our journey together, Erin of Snaefell. I go no further but I wish you the best as you foolishly do."

"And what will become of my big, fine, strong helper?" I asked which seemed to make him happy, his size being a vulnerability he kept secretly to himself, I had learnt while traveling with him.

"I return to Dejima and Sanderson Visser or some other job there. There are plenty to be found. Or maybe I return to Holland and see how my wife and children are faring."

"You're married!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," Carl said mischievously. "What do you think kept me from making a go of thee? One of us married betwixt us is one matter but the both of us being so is too difficult to overcome."

"I will miss you," I started to weep as I held the man close to me. He reached as far as my bosom and his head disappeared into the space between my breasts. In embarrassment, I set him free only to discover I had gotten Kai's blood all over him. "I am most sorry!" I hastily apologized.

"What ever for?" the man said with a lusty grin. "That made the whole trip worth it! I pray to God, if Kai does come back he does not deny himself the pleasure as well."

Patting my plump bottom, Carl turned around and headed back to Dejima, leaving me alone with only a horse and a dead husband for company.

* * *

The forest was filled with mist. It was as if a cloud had descended from the sky and was perpetually attempting to devour the trees and brush but never able to succeed, being made of something incomplete and without form. As I lead the horse into the Tengu forest and the mist, I feared the sheet covering Kai becoming damp and infecting his wounds. I blinked back tears realizing that he was dead already and far above such concerns. My coming here was to change all that, however. If I could only find the Tengu or call them out from their hiding places I could implore them to call my dear friend back from the land of the departed. The forest seemed both living and dead. There were no calls of animal or bird yet the woods seemed _alive_. I wondered then if the mist wasn't a cloud at all but rather the breath of the forest itself.

Repeatedly, I called for the demons, which lived here, to come out and help me.

"TENGU COME OUT TO ME" I called out repeatedly. "YOUR KAI IS WOUNDED! I WISH FOR YOU TO SAVE HIM!" 

A crack heard in the distance ahead of me almost made the horse with Kai bolt but I stopped it in time by grabbing the reins on its head and whispering softly to it. I sang an old Manx lullaby as we walked forwards, to ease us both, but when another loud snap of a branch was heard again, no amount of soothing words spoken or sung could appease it. The horse jolted backwards and the only action I had the time to commit was grabbing the shroud with my Kai from its back as it left me to return back to the Ako domain and leave far behind the ominous forest I had brought it to. The dead man once again fell on top of my body and the wrap around his head unraveled, showing to me Kai's frozen, unfeeling expression.

I was crying once more as I scooted my large bottom on the stony woods floor, feeling the sharp edges of the stones piercing the fabric of the skirt to my dress. That was not what elicited my tears, however. What brought me to that state was seeing Kai's lifeless eyes, reminding me he was dead and not wounded. I sat on the forest's floor and pulled the ronin's body between my legs and rested his head up against my breasts and heart. Softly, I began to sing to him the song from my land of birth that I had used on the unappreciative horse.

Even when the sounds of approach surrounded me, I kept on singing, fearing it was only a real thief come to attack me in the forest and turn Carl's lie into a half truth. I was surprised when, after closing my eyes to kiss the top of Kai's head, I opened them again to see about six figures staring at me with neither kindness nor hatred. Maybe such emotions were beneath them.

Demons that they were.

We remained staring at each other in the forest of their existence. To look at one of them was to look at all of them. They were dressed in similar robes and were all of round, hairless heads. The circumference of their skulls was not interrupted by ears, for they had none, and their eyes were preternaturally large and yellow under a very prominent brow. I focused my attention on the Tengu closest to where I sat. He examined me as I held his past ward protectively.

"Kai is _not_ wounded as you stated," the demon stated. "He is dead."

"Yes," I replied. "He performed seppuku after taking vengeance against Lord Kira."

"He succeeded then with his wish. Why have you brought him to us?"

"I..." suddenly my motivations seemed selfish and I could not find the willpower to utter them. The only valid one I could think of to reply was, "I wish him to live again. It is not fair that he died simply for avenging the murder of his master. This time an eye was called for an eye. And not following orders does not warrent death."

"You are a believer in the Judaic God," the Tengu asked, stepping forward.

"Yes. I am Christian," I commented.

The demon nodded. "You are half like Kai? Not of this island."

I nodded, cradling my dead love's head up to my heart.

"Go away back home foreign, Christian child. Kai has fulfilled his last wish. He has died with honor, which pleases us, or so the wind has confessed to us before your even coming here. Leave these woods before you violate them without meaning and we seek the retribution our laws require."

They were starting to leave me. From their soundless footfalls, I knew that they had wanted me to be aware of their coming the first time, something I knew they thought I should be grateful for. I held Kai, tightly, not being able to suffer it, knowing I had failed, if they left me alone and devastated with the corpse of the man I loved. I needed to quickly think of a way quickly to make them return and force them to grant me my wish for his resurrection.

_"I suppose they abide by the rules of honor here too and are like men in their ways"_

"I AM DESERVING OF RETRIBUTION FOR I AM THE ONE WHOM HAS BEEN WRONGED! THERE IS NO HONOR FOR HIM OR FOR YOU!" I called out angrily, trying to appear as if I was the one whom had been grievously treated and suffered violation at their hands.

The head Tengu monk turned to look at me and walked back three feet towards where Kai and I lay. "I should kill you for such a claim."

"Kai was your student for a time," I spat at it. "It was you whom taught him certain values. Did you not teach him to keep his word? Or do you lie as well as the men you loathe?"

The demon seemed curious and offended. "How did Kai bring us dishonor?"

"He promised that he would stay and protect me. Then one night he fled from my side without so much as a goodbye, left to save his darling Mika!" I cried, some of my pain and anger now becoming genuine.

Seeing this true emotion the Tengu stated, "You might be lying."

I held up my left finger and the old, poor wooden ring adorning it. "Kai is my husband. He married me in a ceremony devoted to please my foreign God. He swore to love, cherish and protect his new wife, I, Erin of Snaefell, and then he abandoned me to run to defend the woman he could never have! Your Kai betrayed both me and my Deity! You taught him poorly about honor and how vows should be respected."

As if he was floating and with unbelievable speed, the monk came to lean over me, glaring into my green-gray eyes with his moon colored ones. I did not flinch or blink, knowing to do so would show weakness and allow the Tengu the chance to abandon me also. "Perhaps we should fix the dishonor by sending you to the other side to find him."

"MAKE HIM HONOR ME IN LIFE NOT IN _DEATH_!" I yelled in defiance, acting the role of a bitter, vengeful widow. Though Kai had wounded me, I held no anger for him but only love, in truth. But I correctly believed that only disgrace to their fearsome name would move the demons to resurrect my husband. "GIVE ME KAI BACK! TO BE MY SIDE AND NOT TO LEAVE ME AGAIN!"

I shoved the ring right up to his face until the skin of my finger was almost touching his flesh, a flesh which looked like burnt sand. We stared at each other, neither of us relenting; neither he, with his supernatural air of superiority, or I, in my feigned act of bold human fury. Suddenly the Tengu stood up, straightening his posture but keeping his eyes still on me. "You wish to have Kai return to be by your side?"

"Yes," I stated. "Tis what is _owed_ me."

"Fine," the monk said. "We shall give you your wish. For Kai has dishonored us in his treatment of you."  
He seemed to communicate without words with his companions and two of his fellow Tengu floated back to me and began to take Kai's body from out of my vice like grip. I allowed them to but suffered a fresh wave of tears and the feeling of empty arms when he was gone.

"Come," the leader motioned me forward.

I picked myself up from the forest's floor, musing in fright how, as a girl, I had longed to see demons and fairies, and walked bravely to the Tengu's side and deeper into the Japanese woods. Knowing now that God had given me the chance to experience my desire, I wondered if I should not have been more careful for what I had asked of Him.


	14. Aahroggal (Resurrection)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Tengu monk takes me deeper into the forest to revive Kai.

The Tengu at first brought me to a temple of some sort in the woods. I was not allowed to enter due to the fact that I was female but had to stay outside on my own, as all the monks went inside to perform whatever ritual they needed to resurrect Kai. Sitting on the earth, both partly relieved and still unnerved, I listened to the sounds of their chanting, failing to understand a single word they were singing. Their own ability to understand me was not as suprising, however, and I understood this was how Kai had known and spoke my language when we had first met in Dejima. Being a creature of faith and a believer in magic, I knew that such powers were well within the demons abilities. Listening to the soft hum of their voices now, I found myself becoming entranced. It was the sound of the wind moving through a tree and caressing each leaf while it brushed against them, the noises made by the flapping of a humingbird's wings or that of a butterfly alighting from a flower, the movement of a rose in its first and only blooming. I was losing consciousness in my mesmerized state until the Tengu I had antagonized, what now felt like hours before, came out carrying the same blood covered shroud that contained Kai's body obviously in it.

"He is still dead," I moaned in sorrow. "It did not work."

"You heard the necessary first steps; keep your doubt to yourself, woman, and follow me to see the next step that must be taken to return your Kai to you."

He began to walk ahead and I had no choice but to follow as he said I must. "Where are we going?" I asked the monk, very much as I used to when I was younger and would bother my mother after she had taken my sister and I out on our first journeys across the small Isle where we lived.

"WE ARE GOING TO TAKE THE FINAL STEP, HUMAN!" he shouted at me in irritation and I took a step back in fright before rushing forward to cach up to him once more.

When he seemed to realize that I was still by his side, he added, "I do not enjoy being in your company. The possibility of you lingering while this needs to take place vexes me. We are going to a place in the forest where time holds no meaning. It will speed up the length it will take to resurrect Kai."

"Will it?" I smiled at him. "I am glad and grateful. Thank you."

"You thank me now," the Tengu said with almost malicious amusement. "What will you do when you have gotten your wish, I wonder."

That insidious tone made me wonder as well.

* * *

When he reached an area of the forest where the trees carried with them a strange blueish hue and the sounds of animals and birds suddenly seemed to turn into a sound almost like the chanting the Tengu had made, a soft melodic hum of the earth, the monk suddenly dropped the sheet holding Kai's body on to the forest floor. He did it so harshly that I could not help but glare at the demon in anger.

"Save your wrath for someone else, child," the monk said. "Nothing that can be done to Kai, at the moment, would harm him any more. He is already saved to you. We only need to bury him."

"Why?" I asked concerned. "I brought him to you so we would not need to place him in the ground."

"From the ground he was formed and from the earth he shall be reborn," the Tengu stated before he placed his hand over a piece of barren ground. At his command, the earth seemed to open in just the proper size to accept my husband's body. After the hole had been formed, the Tengu rolled out Kai's corpse and placed him gently into it, ensuring that his guts remained inside him. I understood then that for Kai to be revived he needed to be in near perfect a state with all of his organs mostly where they naturally should be. Or, at least, kept inside of his body. The demon than replaced the disturbed earth and walked away towards a tree where he began to meditate.

"What are we to do next?" I asked yet another question I had oft pestered my mother with.

"We wait," he returned. "Here in this forest. Five days it should take. There are fish in a lake over there should you need to eat."

How I was to catch them the demon never said, leaving me to fill some of my time waiting in the learning how.

* * *

The lake was pretty and the fish stupid enough to be easily caught. I used my dress as a net and both surprised and upset the demon when I returned in nothing but my bodice and bloomers. The top of my large breasts were on display, glistening with the water that had sprinkled on them during my ordeal of haphazardly netting my supper. I thought I saw the Tengu's yellow eyes lingering on my chest and felt fear inside of me once more as I remembered Adelbert's tales on how the demons in the forest of Japan liked to rape the human women there. As I began to prepare my meal to cook, rubbing two sticks together, I thought I caught him glancing at my breasts again. The fire under way, I found myself summoning the courage to finally confront my fear head on.

"You are not planning on having me for supper or desert are thee?" I asked. "I will not be paying you to bring my husband back to life with the price of my body; be it as a meal or for your pleasure."

The Tengu looked affronted. "I am a monk," he argued. "I have forsaken any lust of the flesh."

Sitting on the ground to face the demon, a fire now crackling to my right, I stared at him. "Vows don't mean much," I stated. "I cannot tell you how many men of the cloth walked into the pub where I worked and walked upstairs in the company of a woman whom would take her own off for a pittance."

"You are a barmaid?" the Tengu asked in shock. "After our privileged rearing of him, Kai has united himself to a barmaid?"

I blinked back my wounded pride quickly. "Yes. I know; Mika was a better and more worthy match."

The monk watched me hugging my legs closer to me and seemed suddenly moved by uncharacteristic pity. "You are fine...for a _human_. I suppose it matters not...all humans are unfavorable."

"And what of demons?" I asked, curious. "Are you all as pious as what sits before me?"

"Not all," the Tengu monk said. "Many demons live in these woods whom would enjoy, with cruel relish, the body you so thoughtlessly put on display."

Hearing his words, I quickly moved my soaked dress closer to the fire to dry as I attempted to hide my breasts behind my knees.

"There is one that would force himself upon you and you would mistakenly believe your ordeal was over, only to discover, nine months later, that the pain in your memory was far kinder when you gave birth to the exact same demon, fully grown," the Tengu said with calm superiority.

The fish crackled above the open flames as the monk continued. "Or the one which poisons her victims so they exist in state of perpetual hell as you refer to it. Others eat the flesh of man and some build their temples of them. Kai was most fortunate to have had us. Though he was always too ungrategul to realize it."

I swallowed and looked to Kai's grave hoping that it would not take too long before my precious seed would once more sprout from the earth and be the man that I loved.

Then we could both leave the cursed forest behind us forever and any demons hiding inside of it.

* * *

I think, as the days wore eerily on, the monk and I grew used to one another's company. His insults and snaps came with less frequency while I tried my best to show to him that I appreviated his giving Kai back to me.

On the third night, I caught the demon studying me. "You love Kai."

"Yes," I said, back in my dress but barefooted, digging my toes into the earth that was preparing my husband for his return.

"Why? He cannot love you."

I frowned. "God just made me stupid, I guess."

"Yes."

"And here I thought you had stopped complimenting me," I remarked.

"He made too many of you stupid."

"Well, at least, I have some company now," I mumbled.

Piercing through the woods, there came a deep and horrible sound. It was loud enough for me to cover my ears but I swiftly took my hands away as I recognized the voice belonging to the one whom was making the chilling sound. "It is Kai!" I exclaimed spinning my head around to once again study his burial place.

"Yes."

I turned to look back at my companion. "What is wrong with him?"

"He is being reborn. It is no more a pleasant experience the second time around than it was the first."

I spun around back to face the sound where the cries were still emanating from and then quickly rushed to him. "It is all right," I whispered, touching the earth covering him and gently drawing circles in it. "It will be soon. Then you can return to Mika. You both can be together. This pain, this momentary pain, will only be a memory then and you will consider it to be an insubstantial price to pay for the joy you will experience."

The Tengu was watching me with almost cold pity again and I felt my blood chilling for I could sense the demon held no faith in my words. "He will be all right when he wakes, right?" I asked desperately, the cries still flooding the forest. I could feel the soil trembling under my touch from the pain Kai was enduring.

"He will physically be the same," the monk stated. "But I cannot promise you he will be all right emotionally or spiritually. There is more agony to be experienced besides the flesh and your promises to him are false."

"Why?" I asked. "Do you know something you are not telling me. SPEAK DEMON!"

The Tengu would not answer but only stared at me as Kai continued to groan in the ground beneath my hands. Against my fingertips, I thought I could sense the earth sharing the ronin's pain and sorrow and I started to weep as well, not knowing what I might have done but suffering his pain and becoming one flesh, as our vows and my God had both decreed.

* * *

The cries stopped on the start of the fifth day. By then I was grateful. Kai's screams had been inescapable and shattered both my heart and soul. The whole fourth day had found me lying on his grave and begging for his forgiveness while the vibrations from his shouts had reverberated throughout my body and soul. The dirt was wet from my tears and when the Tengu had told me to eat something, I had simply cursed him away. The moment the cries died though, and my Kai became silent once more, I sat up and looked down at the soil as it began to move.

"Get out of the way, woman!" the Tengu snapped. "Or do you wish for Kai to have to wage war on more than just the soil on top of his reawakened body?"

I rolled over and out of the way, swiftly scrambling to my feet and rushing to the demon's side in time to watch a hand breaking through the earth I had only moments before been lying on top of. It's palm was opened and facing us, held up towards a heaven blocked by the covering of trees above us. When another hand shortly appeared and began to join the other in the act of digging his buried body out, I started to run to help my husband but stopped when the Tengu hissed at me.

"Kai must do it alone. You are not his mother nor his midwife. The spell will be worthless if the man cannot handle his rebirth on his own."

I stood, watching helplessly as Kai gradually dug himself free from his grave. Eventually his head appeared and I thought him first to have holes for eyes until the dirt fell from them and the man opened his mud encrusted lids to take his first glimpse of the world after his death. I felt a guilty joy when his eyes rested immediately on me and Kai gazed at his unwanted wife in both curiosity and confusion. Pulling himself out further, the ronin looked at the formerly white robe he had worn when he had performed seppuku, now covered in filth and blood. He grabbed the under part of his stomach where he had cut into his flesh and taken his own life by disembowling himself. Quickly, he opened his robe infront of the Tengu and myself to see and display that all which was left of his act of suicide was a large red scar.

Lifting his head, perfectly complete and alive once more, Kai met my eyes and gave me the first words of his ressurrection to accompany having given me his first look as well.

"Erin of Snaefell, _why_ have you done this to me?"


	15. Cochianglt (Bound)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A resurrected Kai holds no love for me after discovering he cannot go home again.

"What have I done?" I asked in return. "Why, I have only saved you!"

"And whom said I desired this form of salvation?" Kai retaliated. "I had died an honorable death. My fate was accepted."

Our eyes locked across the distance of the mysterious forest and I saw in his eyes the full truth of Carl's warnings that I would not be thanked for bringing the ronin back to life. His wrath at me was as clear to see as the disturbed earth he had just torn through to reach the air and the leaves of the trees, obstructing, in part, the sky above us. By trying to wipe from his eyes the cold look which had been in them the last time he had turned them on me, and to soften the harshness of his words, I had only earned an increase to his anger.

He obviously did not wish to be alive.

Still I could not find it in my heart to send him back into the ground he had freed himself from.

I felt the same foreign confusion bubbling inside of me at odd customs and beliefs. Why he should have hated me for giving him another chance to live and seemed to have preferred dying at his own hands during a ceremony of ritualistic suicide was barely fathomable to me.

"And if I had a saber, Kai of the Ako Domain, would you desire me to hand it to you so you could repeat your last act? I can assure you, your bowels look far better inside of your body then hanging out," I commented and pointed to the dress I was wearing with his blood stained all over its front.

Kai's eyes darted to my bloody gown, resting on my chest again, an act that stirred his ire even more, before meeting my eyes once again. The ronin continued to stare at me with rage and I proceeded to glare back with a blind smile, upset but still overwelmingly grateful that he was alive to hate me once again.

Suddenly my husband's eyes left my face to study the forest surrounding us. He looked abruptly at the Tengu, whom had been standing silently by my side without commenting on his former ward's ressurrection, and asked. "The Eien Forest?"

"Yes," the Tengu nodded.

Kai sighed and began to wipe his face. Noticing the soil still on his hand, he brushed it off, along where his chin had been smeared black with it.

"Why?" I asked, realizing that the ronin's mood was not improved by the revelation of where we were standing. "Is that bad? Is it wrong that we are here?"

I aimed the question first at my husband but seeing his anger at me would not permit him to answer in return, I directed it at the demon then instead. The monk looked at me with the same casual indifference and replied, "To resurrect a man he needs to be in the soil, just as he had been inside his mother's womb, for nine months. Being reborn is the same as being born. I brought Kai to the Eien woods to hurry our waiting time over so I would not need to suffer you for too long."

"Imagine being in a pit in Dejima with her for months," Kai remarked bitterly. The comment struck me but I told myself it was his irritation at me speaking and little else. We had always gotten along well with each other until I had tried in vain to make our marriage a real one.

The Tengu looked unimpressed.

"Nine months have passed outside of this forest?" I asked the demon.

"Yes," he commented, the world has quite moved on without noticing our absence."

"But that would mean Mika..." I started to say and then stopped as I turned to read Kai's face again.

Pain was contorting it, making the previous expression of hate seem some half hearted creature next to the anguish he was suffering. He knew it, had suspected it, from when he had first been re-awakened since death. But to hear it finally stated was almost too much to bear. Lowering his head, he looked to his hands. There was dirt so far under the nails he had used instead of a shovel that his cursory brushing it off had not been enough to remove it. He clenched his hands two times, and then closed his eyes, trying to regain the composure he had possessed during his first life. Ignoring me when he simultaneousy raised both lids and head, Kai stared at the Tengu in resolute yet defeated serenity.

"Take me to her," he stated. "Let me see her from a distance."

He knew already what sight would greet him.

* * *

From the edge of the forest, my husband, the demon and I watched a beautiful young woman far into the last few months of her pregnancy. She was walking through the field outside her father's large kingdom, a handsome young man by her side. He was a nobleman; this could be easily discerned by the expensive fabrics he wore and the grace with which he carried himself. The man was also very much in love with his wife.

Even if his affection could not hope to compare to the absolute adoration that Kai would always feel for his lost Mika.

I stood holding the trunk of a tree, watching the ronin's face as he watched the woman he loved walking with her new husband. His dark eyes looked as if they had not been resurrected along with the rest of his body. They were two, dark, dead things viewing what he had spent most of his life wanting but could never truly have.

What could I do? Should I have told him the depth of my regret? What good would it have served the desolation and anguish he was then experiencing? Would it have made him feel better that I would have warned Mika first about my plans to return Kai to her if I had known that the resurrection spell would have taken nine months? The Tengu monk had not told me this and without both I or Mika knowing, Lord Asano's daughter had found someone else to love so she would not be lonely and die of grief. I held onto the tree, placing my face next to it, and wept, sap going on my cheek and seeping into the blood and mud already on my dress.

"She had moved on Kai," the demon stated. "Your love in the end was only worth the beating of your heart."

"She needed to carry on the Asano line," Kai stated. "I forgive her."

Blinking his eyes with great force he then quickly offered me a blistering and accusing glance, which told me that he would never extend the same forgiveness to me.

* * *

Evening in the forest of the Tengu, the sun setting and the noises gradually being exchanged for others, I watched as the sun began to depart from us and the air adopted its increasingly indigo shade. I began to walk closer to my husband but found he would always increase his pace. Though it was difficult, I always managed to reach him again, a fact which annoyed him, though he would not voice it.

"Kai, I'm sorry," I finally said, placing my hand on his shoulder.

The ronin bolted away from my touch, trying to run into the forest and place as much distance between himself and I as possible. Only it was not possible. When the man reached a certain distance of twenty feet his feet would carry him no further and he stopped there as if he had stepped in quicksand. As the Tengu Monk and I neared him, Kai was able to move again but when we stopped the same reaction happened. In great irritation, Kai turned to glare at the demon whom had helped raise him. "What is the meaning of this?" he asked.

"Erin of Snaefell has informed us of several unfortunate choices you have made, Kai, the Tengu stated, walking closer to the samurai whom no longer tried to flee. " You partook in Christian marriage vows with her."

"To keep her safe," Kai hissed in regret.

"And then you violated them by abandoning her," the Tengu continued, disregarding the explanation. "Her grievance was what allowed her to convince us to amend the matter. But we intend to make sure you will not disgrace us anymore by your embarrassing lack of respect and honor."

"But I was only trying to convince you to..." I came closer to both men, suddenly fearing and regretting the ramifications of my choice on how to force the demons into bringing Kai back.

"Then perhaps you will learn to be careful with your own actions also, Erin," the monk stated. "You will find you are now unable to be separated more than twenty feet from each other."

"No," Kai said in extreme displeasure.

"Yes," the Monk returned. "How does it go? Oh yes....Till death do you part."

Scowling, Kai turned to look at me again, after having avoided doing so since he had used them to watch his beloved Mika, belly full with child and a handsome, rich husband on her arm, one with assumably the bloodline and nobility that he lacked, carrying on without him. I watched the ronin's eyes once again taking note of my bloody and muddy (having been used to catch fish) dress and then being turned to his own dirt covered robe. Inhaling sharply, he returned his attention to the Tengu. "Do you have any clothing that would fit my wife and I?" he requested.

The Tengu gazed at the ronin for two seconds before replying, "I think they can be found."

"Thank you," Kai said but his gratitude sounded as hollow as his eyes.

* * *

Once more, I waited outside of the Tengu temple until Kai returned with our change of clothes. It was darker than when we had reached it and I was glad to have Kai with me again when faced with various noises I could not recognize, but which sounded simply terrifying. I smiled at my husband, mistaking his having asked for a new dress for me to mean that he had softened his heart towards his wife as well. I gathered how mistaken I was when the man handed me the new dress roughly, stating with an equal lack of gentility, "Here."

I viewed Kai walking a fewfert away until his back was facing me, while he started to undress. Sighing, I began to change too, casting sad glances at my husband, hoping he would look at me with more warmth. He refused to turn to look at me at all, however, and I quickly rushed to catch up in my own act of dressing. "Where did these come from?" I inquired, looking at the red dress Kai had brought for me.

"They stole them from dead corpses in these woods," Kai answered, his voice void of emotion. "The ones robbed by theives or consumed by demons."

"Oh," I said and gulped, knowing I was wearing the dress of a woman whom had either been raped or eaten and than shat out. "The monk was telling me all about that."

"He likes you...the monk."

"Does he?" I said, trying to tie the laces at the back with some difficulty. "He seems to hate me less than before but you never can tell."

I was still struggling when I felt Kai's large hands doing the laces for me. I guessed that he had finished early and had grown tired of waiting while my chubby fingers fumbled. About to thank him, my words were stolen as my husband grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me arpund to face him.

"I do not share the sentiment," he informed me, glaring into my eyes, which soon filled with tears at his words. "I have grown to dislike you more each day from our first meeting until now when I hate you more than I thought possible."

"Kai," I whispered. "I am most sorry...but everything I have done has been for you."

He glared at me. "You simply wished to keep me near you and show me my only love in the arms of another."

"I had no idea the spell would take nine months to complete," I defended myself. "The Tengu didn't..."

"ENOUGH!" Kai raised his voice, enough to make the woods surrounding us quiet. I backed into the Temple's walls and flinched as the ronin's arms shot out and kept me trapped in place. "I shall never love you, Erin, but I will stay living for one purpose: to keep you away from your beloved Snaefell. If I can not go home again, neither shall you. Together we shall roam this land in abject misery for I shall only ever despise you and you will, likewise, come to abhor me."

I bit my lip but my sorrow and pity was still with the man. Just like his future with Mika, his revenge against me, the woman he blamed for his sorrow, had been spoiled and misplaced too. Snaefell was not my true home. Being by Kai's side was where I truly felt at peace, even if he could only ever offer me his contempt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu,
> 
> I was checking out the overweight tag here on AO3 and I think I'm the primary author of fat girl fics here. I'm proud of that. There are so many slash stories but not as many fics featuring BBW. Maybe if there had been more in my childhood, I wouldn't have felt so ashamed of myself when I was growing up. I also like writing myself as myself because I'm not the stereotype I always see of big women. They usually are loud mouths, comic relief or lesbians in the world of entertainment. I'm a strong but shy and quiet girl whom is happily 100% interested in guys. 
> 
> I think in "To the Bone" and "Always be My Maybe" both big girls were lesbians. And kind of brash which made me sad. I know you and Chad put a non binary character in John Wick. How about a big, sweet, het girl next time? I feel like we're a minority even though there are A LOT of us out there. I get the health thing but...it doesn't seem fair somehow.
> 
> Anyway, I'm happy to write these and help out the big girl romance fiction here. And I am honored to use your filmography to do so. Thank you, sir.
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	16. Cree Brisht (Bleeding Heart)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kai and I roam through the Japanese forest, together yet separate, with our respective griefs

For weeks Kai and I roamed and survived in the dark and unnerving forests of Japan. Occasionally, he would let us venture out into a small villiage but never into a city. And certainly never anywhere near the Ako domain where his beloved Mika and her new husband resided. I often caught him staring off into the space ahead of us and I knew his thoughts were continually on the past and the future he would not be sharing with the woman he loved, a future which a stranger was currently enjoying.

I knew what was further driving him into madness and despondency was the fact that under the same sky where he was struggling with his agony, Mika was living out an existence that did not include him. If he had been dead he would have been past the suffering of it. But some foolish woman had cursed him with having to face the knowledge of his beloved's love and life being given to another man.

My husband was lonely even though he had me constantly by his side. And in his misery he heeped that same punishment of shared solitude on his wife, the cause for his sorrow, by ignoring me constantly and pretending that I did not exist.

I was wounded too.

To have the man I love constantly keep his eyes from me, and his tongue often still, made me feel as if my soul were shrinking inside of my body and that I might fade away into the mist which usually surrounded us. If I did then, at least, Kai might breathe me into him and I could exist within his lungs, helping him in some small way in my absence, instead of being ignored. Oh if only I could have given him strength or comfort! But I was the cause of his resurrection and subsequent pain so I could offer him none. My death would have helped him far better than my life.

Kai hated me. It was a clear fact betrayed in his eyes every time they landed on me by mistake or out of mere necessity. It was even worse than our last few days spent together in the little prison underneath the fighting pit. For the vast beauty of the forest, though it was odd to me and often frightening, made me wish that we could experience it together, if not as man and wife, at least, as the friends we used to be. I would ask my husband what a particular animal was, which crossed our paths, or the name of a plant that surrounded us and would receive only the curtest of replies back.

We were married but only in name not in the spirit which I longed for.

There were two areas where Kai did tend to me as a husband would: providing me with food and drink and protecting me from the demons in the forest that we inevitably came across.

The first demon we encountered in our destinationless journey had been a small muddy thing. It was short in stature and would have made me laugh with its deceptively harmless appearance until Kai immediately took out the saber the Tengu leader had given him before our departure and sliced through it several times, throwing sand on it and offering some words before moving forward.

"You did not need to do that," I chastised the ronin after the demon's swiftly delivered demise, running after his sulking figure several feet ahead of me.

"Did I not?" Kai asked, throwing me a look of pure annoyance.

"No," I replied. "It meant us no harm."

Kai laughed without humor. "Let's see if you claimed as much when it crawled into your ear while you lay sleeping, Erin of Snaefell, and took hold of your body and mind. Mudwells prefer _female_ hosts."

"It would have done that?" I asked in horror.

"Yes," Kai said brusquely.

"I must thank you for saving me then," I replied, warmed of heart that he had protected me from it.

"Don't," he returned coldly. "I cannot stand your company as is. If you were possessed by demon it would gave been doubly unbearable."

I had stopped and watched the man walk away from me again in hurt silence but then swiftly rushed to catch up.

Not that the ronin could have gotten away from me so easily; not with the Tengu curse still linking us together until one of our deaths anyway.

* * *

"Here," Kai stated one afternoon by the fireside.

He had finished gutting and cooking a pheasant over the fire and had given me my share of it. Not being able to leave his side, I was forced to go with him when he hunted and would often turn my back so I would not have to witness the poor bird or animal's death.

Hungry as I often was, though, this did not mean that I would not partake of my husband's spoils.

Eating the meat, I stole glances of my companion as he ate his own portion, wishing that we could talk as we used to.

"The sunrise was pretty this morning," I commented.

Kai continued to eat the meat from off the bird's drumstick, not offering me so much as a glance while his shoulders tensed to indicate that he had, at least, heard me.

"God outdid Himself tonight," I added.

"Your one or my many?" the ronin asked, flinging the bones to his left side.

I sighed. "I am not looking for an argurment. Can we not just both remember the rising sun and agree that it was beautiful?"

"If I was in the _ground_ , where I should be, I would not have seen it," he retaliated in disdain.

I was about to apologize again, one more placed upon a mountain of their ancestors, when Kai raised his hand. "Did you hear that?" he asked.

"No," I shook my head. "But my hearing is not as finely honed as a samurai like yourself." It was a compliment, of course. I had not stopped offering them to the man ever since our reunion, along with my apologies.

But, just as always, Kai only threw it back in my face. Turning to glare at me, he remarked with great resentment. "No, I am a _ronin_ , Erin of Snaefell. And I should be resting with my fellow 47 if it was not for a foreigner whom stuck her big nose where it did not belong."

Frowning, I watched as he put out the fire with the remainder of our water and walked as far away from me as was permitted. Trying hard not to cry, though, the man could hardly see it, possessing no eyes on the back of his head nor the back which were facing me, I finished the rest of my afternoon meal and then walked to Kai's side as we walked out the woods and to its edge.

It had apparently been raining where we arrived, a large green hill now covered in patches of mud where the raindropped covered grass did not grow for whatever reasons it possessed. I felt myself almost slipping down the slope and Kai quickly looked over his shoulder at me. "Watch you step," he warned. "The fall would be unlikely to kill you but the climb upwards would take a good bit of effort."

"I could manage it," I claimed boldly. "On the Isle, I often climped the hills and mounts with my sister. Do not underestimate me, husband, over my size!"

Kai turned to tell me something, most probably that he was not _truly_ my husband, but we both stopped when we heard a strange sound behind us.

"You heard it this time," Kai stated, seeing my startled expression.

"Yes," I replied. The sound was a deep one of something taking labored and wet breaths. "What is it?"

Once more Kai was about to answer until he instead suddenly and reflexively cried, "DOWN ERIN!"

I fell to the grassy floor immediately as something like a solid piece of air went flying above and past me. Whatever the creature was, it reached the ronin after he had drawn his gifted saber. But my husband could hardly fight what he could not see. Though he sliced through the space before him, the sound of mad cackling reached us both and I watched helplessly as my beautiful Kai appeared to be hit repeatedly after his weapon failed in striking its target.

"WHAT IS IT?" I screamed, rising to my feet.

"A MIENAI DEMON!" Kai shouted back. "AND IT IS HUNGRY!"

"EVERYTHING HERE IS!" I cried out in frustration, unsure of how to help my husband.

I watched the ronin fighting his invisible enemy and was left in awe of his skill with the sword. His movements were grace personfied; his powerful masculinity enough to take the breath from my lungs, the beating from my heart and to cause a desperate pining in its place instead. It was in no way different in his losing then in his victories. Although it seemed like a hopeless battle, Kai kept putting his whole essence into it, enough to win my love all the more though it was something he did not crave.

"PREPARE TO RUN! GO!" Kai shouted towards me and I knew he saw his own impending loss and death as his shoulder bled from teeth neither of us could see.

 _See_ , I thought.

"NO!" I screamed my reply, gathering an armful of the fresh mud and running to where my husband had fallen on to the wet, grassy ground.

Crying out in anger, I climbed upon my husband and his invisble foe and rubbed the mud into the demon's skin, giving my husband a fighting chance. As the flesh of my palms touched whatever existed in place of the beasts own, I felt my skin become repulsed by the contact and begin to burn. It was the demon's natural defense against such a tactic, I understood, but I kept painting it with the mud regardless of the pain, making it visible. Through the bit of the demon not yet covered in the muck, Kai gave me one fleeting and strange look as he managed to maneuver his saber and stab his enemy. The demon died with a powerful shriek which caused a brief quake in the area around us, enough to make all three of us start to roll down the steep hill we had before been precariously perched atop.

Rolling...

rolling....

rolling...

clinging to each other we fell. Sometime during our descent, however, the demon turned to vapour and by the time we reached the hill's bottom it was only Kai and myself holding onto each other as the rain began to fall once more. The ronin landed on top of my trembling body and I gazed up into his face while he panted over me and I panted beneath him. His breath was hot and mingled on my face with the fresh cool rain. I must have been lying there under his strong body for minutes before the ronin did one more roll, this time removing his body off from mine. Using his sword, he rose to his feet while I continued to lie on the ground, letting the rain fall on to my skin and hopefully steal the distant arousal I felt from having been so near to and in such an intimate position with the man I loved so deeply and hopelessly.

When I finally found the courage to stand, I had no sword to aid in my rising and instinctively used my hands which instantly seared in pain. An agonized scream left my throat and Kai rushed towards me, his own shoulder still bleeding. He took my hands gently in his own and flinched as he studied them. "They will be scarred," he commented. "But you were well guarded by your God. I've known men to lose their hands from making contact with the Mienai."

"Scarred," I said with a black laugh. "Just like my maidenhead...One scar amongst the many. And whom is there to give a damn, my dear fallen samurai?"

Kai raised his eyes to meet mine, knowing I was referring to his cold treatment of me. "We are _all_ scarred," he returned.

Guilt beyond the standing of it filled me and I brought my damaged hands to my husband's face to hold it. "Will you ever forgive me, Kai?"

He would not answer. All the warrior would do was say some words I could not understand, grab a handful of mud which he spit into and then smeared the concoction on the seared palms of my hands. "Guard them from the rain," he instructed and walked away from me as was his current custom.

* * *

Days later, my hands hurting less, Kai and myself came across a smattering of beautiful flowers I had no familiarity with. They were of bright pink, bordering on red, with long hanging pieces of white like a falling teardrop beneath their two hillocked tops. The flowers were at the entrance of the forest we were about to re-enter and I stopped to admire them, stalling our journey into the darkness.

We had spent the time before in a village where my sullen companion had given the local healer several hours of labor to tend to my hands and his shoulder. My husband's mood was in no way kinder towards me but he had felt responsible for my burnt flesh and indebted by my act of sacrifice. Now it had been repaid we were returning to our misery far away from the world of other humans.

"What are these?" I asked Kai, holding one of the pretty flowers in my healed fingers. No longer able to feel as much past the scarred tissue, I ran them gently against the still undamaged skin on the back of the digits. The petals were soft and I delighted in the feeling of them, believing that I might take some with us before we entered the dangerous woods.

"A Bleeding-Heart," Kai replied sadly after a beating of his own.

"Fitting," I said with a quick, loud swallow, letting the flowers fall back into their former place before I had disturbed them; an act I could not repeat with the husband I had rudely taken from his peaceful and desired slumber.

It was cruel to bring any of the flowers with us, I knew. Cruel and pointless.

Bleeding-Hearts...

We need not look to flowers to see those.

Kai and I carried with us both our own.


	17. Oltaghey (Hospitality)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kai and I stumble across a cabin in the woods with a strange woman, one whom seems to have an odd effect on the ronin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing was hard today because I'm still hurt and pissed off at the woman over at kickstarter. I don't know who does crazy shit like that, trying to make someone feel bad. Oh, I know: someone who is jealous.
> 
> Did my photo annoy her? I used a photo because my sister had just recently gone through a really bad experience at Facebook with a man whom publicly humiliated her for NOT having a photograph of herself. It scarred me too so I went with an actual portrait at kickstarter. What? Was I supposed to pick an ugly one? And then I just wind up being shamed for having a photo? Sheesh you can't win!
> 
> Maybe she was jealous because she thinks Keanu would actually like these stories and *like* me. That I'm somebody worth being jealous of? Ha! If she does she has more faith in that then I do. :/
> 
> Oh well...
> 
> If her goal is to get me to stop FAT chance. I'm finishing every single story here and writing one for the rest of his filmography too. Seeing that his next films are sequels that gives me time to catch up. And if I stop writing 'em it will be because of something Keanu does himself and not something done by someone in the small amount of bitches in his extremely large fan base.
> 
> Now besides the note to Keanu...enough on that subject. Back to Japan...

We stumbled upon a cabin about two weeks after my hands had been irreversibly scarred. It was made out of logs and seemed to have become terribly damp from the constant mist of the forest. Water dripped down its sides like small waterfalls and it would have been pretty if it had not disturbed me in some small way. A small, aged woman was bustling around outside of the cabin, tending to some flowers in a small patch of garden at the front. The kimono she was wearing was so white it made her appear to glow and her wrinkled face looked like an apple when it had not been consumed soon after its initial carving.

"What is it?" I asked, knowing by now not to trust what I saw.

"It's a cabin and an old woman," Kai replied tersely.

I grabbed his arm as he made to move forward, our path only path available taking us right past her.

"Are you sure?" I whispered. "She seems quite harmless but so did the mud and the air."

Kai glared down at me with pensive dark eyes. "She's just an old woman. Often those whom have been shunned from the villages find their way to the woods. They are able to survive if they keep their wits and stay to one place. She has been here a while it seems. Do not be too fearful, Erin of Snaefell."

He looked down to my hands and then gently took his arm away and averted his eyes. I knew that to see them bothered Kai. It was a reminder of how I had helped him from the air demon and of the love I held for him, one which he would not accept.

The ronin proceeded to move forward, ignoring the companion that quickly rushed on chubby legs to catch up to him.

Later I would realize that two factors contributed to the foolishness which caused the torment which swiftly followed. First there was his strong need to contradict me whenever possible. My sacrifice had not been enough to warm his heart but had created a resentment inside of his mind instead. He seemed to desire to push me as far away emotionally as possible since he could not physically do the same. I tried to deal with the pain of it as best I could in relative silence, fearing that even this he would find a way to belittle eventually.

The second motivation was simply that the resurrected ronin was tired of living. By then, deprived of his darling Mika's company and forced with only that of the round and irritating woman he had married in kindness and now hated, Kai was not being as careful as he should have perhaps. He desired death in its peaceful, lonely way: a return to the grave I had saved him from.

Kai did not know, however, that the small woman had no plans to _kill_ him. Her intent was far worse.

My ronin husband did not acknowledge the woman as he walked by, other than a curt nod. I echoed it only for the fact to be polite, reasoning that if the old woman was dangerous somehow offending her more than necessary seemed a poor move. It was while I was nodding at her that I failed to see that Kai had stopped moving forward to avoid tripping on some vines growing ahead of him. I bumped into his wide back and we both fell into the bramble, my husband on the bottom and me on the top.

"I am so sorry," I was apologizing as I climbed off of him and he offered me another glare before he tried to rise to his feet. As he did, he made a small noise of pain and I noticed that his hands were now covered in scratches. Casting a glance to the vines, I saw that they bore thorns. "I am so sorry, Kai," I whispered again, holding his bloody hands in my scarred ones.

"An eye for an eye," he said without humor. "Isn't that what your God demands?"

I shook my head and touched his skin, painting my healed wounds with his fresh blood. "He demanded mercy and forgiveness too," I stated sofly.

The old woman had finally managed to reach us. She was shaking her head and almost fainted when she saw the blood on Kai's hands. I watched as she did a strange half turn and the man was forced to catch her. In the process he touched her robe of gleaming ivory and I shivered at seeing his blood smeared on it. The kimono lost some of its light, turning a deeper shade then, tarnished almost. I shook my head and found the robe just as blinding as ever. Believing I had imagined it, I focused on my husband's handprints as he set her back up on her sandal clad feet.

When I looked to my husband's face, there was a confused cast to it, his dark eyes looking almost dazed.

"Are you all right?" Kai asked in his usual calm compassion.

She replied in Japanese and I could not understand her. Whatever she had spoken however seemed to satisfy the ronin. When she pointed to his hands in distress, I assumed she was fretting over the wounds he had received.

"No, bandages are not necessary," he declined and started to walk away.

The old woman suddenly said something and I watched in surprise as my husband stopped and turned around, halting in his wanted escape.

"I knew a woman whom told me often the same thing," Kai said warmly, staring down at the elderly stranger. Seeing the memories dancing in his eyes, and feeling suddenly excluded between what was passing between the woman and he, I understood that it was Mika whom had chastised my husband lovingly with words I could not fathom. I suddenly wished I was like a violet shrinking away into the darkness. The feeling was almost overpowering. Unusually so. This sensation of intense and desperate withering, above all else, compelled me forward to try to fight it.

"Kai, we must leave," I said, coming to grab his wrist. He looked down at me with more disgust than he ever previously had but I kept my hand on his wrist and my eyes unblinking on his.

The woman earned his attention once again by saying something else.

"What did she say?" I asked.

"She invited us in," Kai said almost in a daze.

The stranger shuffled away back to her cabin and Kai went to follow.

"Leave it," I hissed. "I can tend to your wounds better when we are alone."

He pulled his hand free again. "Maybe I am tired of your company alone," he spat. "You cling closer than the vine did."

As if burnt by his words, I stepped back and gazed into his eyes, seeing some strange countenance on his face still and the wild light dancing in his almost black eyes as he glared at me. "The vines..." I stated. "They have made you go part mad, Kai...Oh! We must get away from here."

We both turned to find the woman standing in the cabin's door, waiting for us to join her.

When Kai moved forward I grabbed his arm a final time but he pushed me backwards. I almost fell down in another one of the old woman's small flower beds but regained my footing. I followed him closely, though he grunted at my nearness. Vine I might be but this time it was done to keep the man safe, I reasoned, as the old woman ushered us in and closed the door behind us.

* * *

The cabin was small and suprisingly empty. Unnervingly so. There were two rooms at the far corners and the sight of their contents were blocked from our view. In another corner, there was a common Japanese mat on the floor, which a cat lay curled up on and close to it sat cooking pots, kettles and utensils. This was it in terms of accoutrements. Everything inside of the building looked old and the place smelt of wet and rotted wood.

She went to the mat and scared the cat off from it by lifting it up and finding several pieces of cloth lying underneath. The feline screetched and ran far away to a corner where it watched its owner solely out of all the three humans in the room. Its yellow eyes were wide and suspicious and I thought the cat looked inexplicably frightened of its master.

Waving her hand in our direction, the old woman called Kai forward and I joined him silently. On her knees, the woman attempted to tear pieces of cloth from the red fabric and failed. Kai offered to do it fot him but she refused, holding it closer to her body and nodding at his damaged hands.

"Let me try," I said, leaning forward and making to grab at it. The woman held the cloth even farther back, offering me a scalding and distrustful glare.

"She doesn't trust you because you are foreign," Kai said returning to himself partly, the woman's prejudice having jarred him from his odd dazed and occasionally overly emotional fugue. I understood that her sudden reaction to me had recalled too vividly inside his mind the prejudice he had suffered since youth. He said something to her and seemed further disturbed when she rose to her feet and ran off to one of the rooms on the opposite end of the cabin.

Kai turned to look at me. "She has gone to cut the cloth herself. She cannot be a demon, at least," he added. "Their prejudice and hatred is reserved for all mankind. They do not base it on race."

"I cannot believe you led us here," I scolded.

Kai blushed, looking equally embarrassed. "She quoted something that Mika used to say."

I sighed but did not feel the strong depression I had earlier, now that the woman was out of the room. I was about to suggest we leave when the little stranger bustled back in with the rags successfully torn. She immediately knelt, grabbed Kai's hands with a startling speed and began to wrap them in the rags.

The ronin said something in confusion and she twittered back her reply.

"They are wet," he said. "She told me that she placed an ointment on them."

I placed my head close to them and sniffed. My nose crinkled back in repulsion. "Smells strong...like sulpher and blood."

"I _was_ bleeding, Erin" Kai reminded in short temper.

His hands soon covered, the woman stood and smiled down at us. Though she was short in height, she suddenly looked taller and more powerful than either of her guests. She mumbled something and then shuffled off back to her room.

"She has invited us to stay," Kai translated.

"Most certainly not!" I protested. "Let us leave."

Kai turned and looked at me. "We must not insult her hospitality," he argued and I saw that the old woman's influence over him had not completely dissolved. I stood and pulled on his arm, hoping to move him to the door but he remained sitting stubbornly where he was. "She has you bewitched," I said falling back by his side. "A demon she may not be but she must be a witch. We have to leave."

Kai stood and I harboured a hope that he would heed my suggestion and leave with me. "I'm going to bed," he stated. "She's offered us the room across from hers."

With a few mild oaths I followed my husband to the room which was small enough to hold only enough space for another mat on the floor with a few old and moth eaten blankets. The thought of sleeping as near to me as when we were in Dejima was enough to momentarily make Kai reconsider in choice to stay but he moved forward to my disappointment. Crawling onto the mat, he faced the rotting wooden wall of the cabin so he would not need to look at me. I lay down next to him, staring at his back and praying that the night would turn out better than the feeling in the pit of my stomach was telling me it would. If there were any comforts to be found it was that Kai was by my side and that the sword the Tengu leader had gifted him was ready by his side too.

The curse of those same Tengu prevented me from leaving Kai to seek better safety. Yet even if I had my freedom, I knew, I would have lingered with my husband to try to keep him safe from the enchantment he had fallen into due to his stubbornness and my clumsiness.

I stayed awake keeping watch and listening as Kai's breathing suddenly included the occassional snore. Then temptation proved too great and I wrapped my arms around my sleeping husband's body and unintentionally fell asleep in the one sided embrace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> I was thinking about the woman whom insulted me over at kickstarter and remembering her tumblr page and I feel the need to correct a previous statement. I don't know how I could have possibly misjudged a small portion of your fanbase. I feel really bad about it. They DON'T go along with everything you say. How could I have been so stupid?
> 
> I forgot that they DON'T ever accept the fact that you weren't involved with River Phoenix and that the suggestion usually annoys the shit out of you.
> 
> Many interviewers have noted how irritated you become when they drag out poor River's memory. You even told one that you were sick of them trying to get you to say something revealing. Yet some of your fans insist on keeping the notion that you two were lovers. Even though, at that time, it was stated in Movieline that you were often seen with a petite young woman at the bars. I'm guessing Autumn MacIntosh, the girl Kim probably was refrencing when she told People you had been in an off and on relationship for years.
> 
> River cruelly teased you during the filming of the scene with Udo Kier. Infact, BOTH of you wanted Scott Favor's role: the mostly straight male prostitute, if I remember correctly.
> 
> Yet, I read so many of your fangirls holding on to some fake illusion. Like this one woman who was saying that in any MOPI pictures you looked so concerned and protective of River and his drug habit. I laughed out loud at that one. You were on drugs at the same time. Friends said you carried around a big bag of Mary Jane and you've never been completely negative about your own experiences with drugs.
> 
> It reminds me of that scene from "Return of the Jedi" where the Ewoks see C-3PO and start to worship him because he's gold and shiny and beautiful. But when they take him back to the Ewok village and are about to roast his friends when he says, "No, don't do that! They're my friends!" they just go on about their merry way and ignore him. It's like they are saying, "We like you because you are gold and shiny and we'll go along with anything you say but if it inteferes with our fun then we won't listen." Only when their lives are possibly threatened do they truly give a damn.
> 
> You remind me of C-3PO with them. You're attractive and famous so they adore you but they will not pay attention to what you are saying if it contradicts a vision they hold in their mind. And they like the idea of two hot guys getting it on. And if there are two guys, well, there are no *girls* to get jealous of or to make them feel insecure...
> 
> Shipping slash characters is one thing. But shipping the actors who play them...that is NOT cool. Especially when it seems contrary to the actors' wishes.
> 
> And here I was always worried about being like that Valley girl whom lost your interest when she projected too much of her vision of you on to you than accepting the real thing. When I read an interview with you, Keanu, and you say something I don't particularly agree with or like, I don't try to change it. I may get pissed off, I may disagree but I'm not delusional enough to fool myself that you never said it. I just accept it and continue being your fan.
> 
> One whom honestly doubts you were anything other than just close friends with River Phoenix. And even that relationship is private to yourself and should be respected.
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	18. Jouyl (Demon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I discover the truth behind our hostess as Kai succumbs to a mysterious illness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. Got everything updated that I planned to this week for this series. Tomorrow my Zootopia fic will be updated which makes me nervous. It's my most popular fic and the next chapter is an important one! I hope I can do it well!

I had been sleeping, without dreams, when something landed on top of me bringing me to full conciousness with a cry and limbs which were flailed frantically about for a second or two. My heart was pounding in my chest, struggling against my bones and flesh as if it too wished to escape. My memory had returned fully by then and I remembered where I was, all of my former sense of unease coming back to me. I was staring into the eyes of the old woman's black cat, whom was sitting on my chest and gazing at me as if he wanted nothing more than to impart some secret bit of wisdom to me.

"Kai," I whispered but only heard him groan by my side.

Worried more for his sake than my fear of being studied by a mysterious cat, I took the beast in my arms and sat up to find the ronin clutching his stomach and making wounded whimpers. I saw several beads of sweat on his brow and watched one very large one make its lazy journey down the bridge of his nose.

"Kai," I said again, this time urged by concern for him rather than myself. I placed the cat down to my other side in the cramped room and then touched my husband's shoulder. "What's wrong? Tell me," I pleaded softly, so as not to be heard by our host.

The man looked at me, about to speak but then screamed in agony. Going to the fetal position, his knees hit my stomach and I backed into the wall, squishing the cat up against it. The poor thing screetched in an animalistic imitation of the suffering man and jumped to the foot of the mat, shaking its head. I turned to see it still staring at me, as if still attempting to deliver some important message despite almost being physically harmed in the process.

Glancing at Kai once again, I suddenly understood that both events, the cat's appearance and Kai's illness, were connected and if I desired an answer for the latter I should only delve further into the former. I once again placed my hand on my husband's trembling shoulder and offered him a caress of comfort before heading off to follow the cat with the midnight coat to wherever it longed to take me.

We stared at one another, the cat and I, before it went cautiously away from the guest room towards that of the old woman's instead.

Trying to keep my courage up, I followed it to the room and pushed aside aged and fraying curtains to see what horrible information I had to learn to help save my suffering husband.

The room was filled with the bones of man, resting in piles higher than what appeared to be the height of the house itself. The skulls of many victims stared at me with grinning mouths, the meat picked off of them mostly but with a few shreds left across their ivory surface. The room itself seemed to have been reconstructed of their flesh and it looked to me as if I had suddenly become trapped in the body of a person, looking at blood and veins and tissue from the inside. The strong smell of blood filled my nostrils and made me gag in reflex while my eyes came to finally rest on the revealed form of our true host.

Hissing, the cat approached the old woman sitting at the center of the room which was undeniably a profanity committed against anything human. Only now could I finally see that she was not a woman or a human being at all. Her robe removed, I understood the body which had been hidden was neither a male nor a female but demonic in form. It was a serpent, its long tail coiled around itself and the scales of its greenish skin possessed nothing in the form of genitallia but was smooth in its own rough way all around its long spiraled body. At the core of it, I could see a large slash which was weeping blood, clear and smelling of sulphur.

The demon had in its hands, now reverted back to their true claw like appearance as well, the robe Kai had touched. It was licking the blood on the fabric, the substance having become wet again. Finished this, the creature wrung every last drop of it on to its horribly long tongue and swallowed it with delight.

"SSSooo gggooddd," it was whispering. "SSSooo gggooddd..."

It was laughing in between its feasting and the sound of that appeared to make my small, dark guide all the more angered. The cat lunged at the demon but the evil creature caught it in one taloned hand, its claws seeming to come alive and wrap around the feline's torso. Still cackling and driving the cat mad with the noise, I watched in horror as the demon dangled the cat by its tail over its mouth. Though the orifice had started out as being only as wide as that of the old woman it had been pretending to be, it soon grew to accomadate the animal, its neck elogonating as it did.

"NOOOOO!" I screamed but it was too late. It loosened its grip and the cat dropped into the gaping hole. With a loud gulp, my new friend was gone, although I could see its body frantically thrashing during its journey down the elongated neck.

My feet moving forward they landed on blood and flesh, like that of some organ, and I lost my footing on a ground which no longer felt balanced or made of strong substance. Falling, the palms of my hands met only gore. Veins rose through the blood and wrapped around my wrists and ankles and I became trapped and unable to move as the demon finally took notice of me.

"Fffforeignnnn cccreatureeee," it hissed. "Yyyourrrr Gggoddd ppprotectsss yyyouuu fffrommm mmmyyy eeenchantmentsss...bbbuttt nnnottt yyyourrr rrroninnn..."

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HIM?" I screamed, struggling to break free but unable to.

"Hhheee hhhasss bbbeennn kkkillinggg mmmyyy kkkinddd," it replied. "III'veee sssimplyyy rrrepaiddd hhhimmm," the thing said with maniacal glee. "Hhheee hhhasss sssenttt ttthemmm tttooo eeeternalll pppunishmenttt...hhheee ssshalll hhhaveee tttheee sssameee..."

The demon's joy turned to repulsion as it studied me immobilized before it and yet still trying to break free.

"Bbbuttt III hhhave nnnooo uuuseee ffforrr yyyouu... _Yyyouuu_ sssimplyyy _DDDIEEE_!"

It's hand extended, coming towards me where I was trapped on my hands and knees. Huge claws wrapped around my large middle in the same way they had done with the black cat and a scream of frustration and pain escaped from my mouth, feeling the veins which were my bonds tearing and finally setting me free, only so I could meet my death in the demon's mouth. Although the hand and arm bringing me to the once again widening lips appeared to be as thin and fragile as the limb of a tree, I felt in them an inhuman strength which handled both my size and attempts to escape as if I were little more than some annoying bug making itself into a pest. Above the gaping mouth now, I could see inside of the demon, a space which seemed to be a constantly waving sea of blood.

Not knowing what else to do, I screamed out the name of the man I loved, desiring for that single word to be with me as I died, even if the ronin it belonged to had never been with me in anything more than his detached physical presence

"KAI!" I cried out loudly.

The bloody void beneath me was growing and I flinched and then shut my eyes to save myself from that one horror.

They remained closed until I heard the sound of the demon crying in turn. Opening my eyes, I saw the ronin himself at the belly of the demon. The mat we had slept on was in the space between he and the creature and my mind discerned how the man must have thrown it on the middle of the room of blood and flesh to jump towards the demon about to devour me. Though his face was still covered in sweat and bearing a look of absolute physical anguish, he had managed to make it to the creature and slice it straight through its scaly belly from one side to the next, almost as if he had performed seppuku on it himself.

Swiftly afterwards, as the beast was losing the sea of blood which made up its innards, Kai used his sword, now covered in a mixture of the beast's clear sulphuric blood and the blood of the many humans it had consumed, to slice off the thin arm holding me. He caught me in his waiting arms, though my weight and his obvious distress made him fall onto the gory floor which no longer wished to ensnare us.

The forest demon was screaming in agony, its powers lost, as the blood which had obviously given it its strength flooded out. In relief, I saw the black cat sliding out, apparently unharmed in the sea of red, meowing and hissing over the indignity of what had been done to it.

Kai was screaming out again in torment and I embraced him while the cabin in the woods began to dissolve around us. The walls of gore and tissue mimicked the act of a human body at its death and began to return to the earth, while I held my screaming husband, trying to give him comfort and protection, though his cries told me there was none to be found inside of my arms for him.

Suddenly we were alone in a deserted space of the forest, I no longer recognized. The cabin and the garden were gone and all that remained which looked any bit familiar was the black cat, now covered in blood, his eyes glowing at us in the dark of night.

"AAHHHHHHHHH!" Kai screamed, holding himself.

I was crying then too, not sure what to do to help him. "The Tengu!" I exclaimed and rose to my feet. "Kai! We have to go to the monks. They can heal you."

The man gave no indication he had heard me but only kept convulsing violently and crying out. I tried to help him stand but he fell to the forest ground instead, writhing in extreme agony. "KAI!" I cried out. I thought of going to the Tengu, myself, but knew it meant leaving the ronin alone. In the woods, surrounded by his enemies, I had already seen how dangerous and foolish this was. Weeping I fell to my knees and looked around in desperation.

"Please God, find some way," I prayed.

My eyes suddenly landed on the pair of large yellow eyes staring at me before they suddenly vanished into the brush and Kai and I were left truly alone.

* * *

It was a long time before I saw the pair of yellow orbs coming back towards me and I cried out and clutched my husband closer as I saw that the feline had brought with it another much larger shape. "Who or what are you?" I demanded prepared to protect Kai with my life if it was necessary.

"Human woman, you have a tendency to find trouble," a familiar voice answered back with an exasperation which betrayed his identity further. As the visitor summoned a bit of light in the forest, I was not surprised to see the face of the Tengu monk looking at me with his characteristic disdain.

I smiled at him, feeling Kai still in pain but without consciousness in my arms.

"You also found a friend," the demon said glancing at the cat by his feet.

I nodded in gratitude at the pussycat whom nodded in acknowledgement and then swiftly ran into the forest, his debt repaid.

"We encountered a forest demon," I informed the Tengu monk, stroking my Kai's sweat drenched cheek and beard. "They enchanted Kai but not me..."

The monk nodded. "You are immune. Your God is not known to many of us. He offers you protection from our ways. But not Kai. He is bound to us and so he fell."

"What did it do to him?" I asked in fear. "Can you help him?"

"Poison," the demon replied in an indiffident tone. "It infected him with its blood and consumed his own. A very old and crude magic but effective all the same. No. I cannot help. He is out of our reach, protected by the pacts made between us demons."

I thought of Kai falling on the thorny vines and getting the resulting blood on the strange robe. Then I remembered the bandages the old woman had brought to cover his wounds, the ones with the strange ointment. "It said he was in eternal punishment..." I whispered, stroking the damp skin once more and kissing his forehead to make my lips wet with sweat and not only my fingertips.

"He is in constant pain," the Tengu stated. "In it, he will remain. He cannot die now. The curse states that he will live forever in unbearable agony until the end of time or until a sacrifice is made, one performed only by a human."

"A sacrifice?" I repeated.

The monk nodded but appeared as if the word was inconsequential. He returned his focus to his previous subject. "He cannot _die;_ understand, child?"

Slowly what the demon was telling me sunk in and I nodded. If Kai could not die but was left in eternal torment I was to remain bound to him in his current state until my own death.

The Tengu monk suddenly reached out his hand and touched my forehead. "I free you from your prison, Erin of Snaefell," he said lifting the spell which kept me tied to the cursed and suffering ronin.

Not that it mattered at all, I knew, blinking back tears. The curse only truly worked in regards to Kai. It was my heart and love that had kept me by my husband's side.

"I can't leave him," I whispered. "I love him."

The Tengu monk stared at me close to sympathy and understanding. "I thought you wouldn't, foolish child. But you cannot do him any good. Not unless you desire a similar fate. But to do so would separate you from your God and from any hope you held of some end paradise which would have made your pain here worthwhile. You would take Kai's curse upon yourself."

My eyes falling to Kai's face, every feature on it contorted in pain, I thought of how in my own recklessness I had robbed him from his own peaceful end reward. Now he was to face a life filled with torment but with no chance of it truly ending unless I sacrificed myself for him and became damned by doing so.

"What is the act?" I asked, looking into my husband's sleeping face.

The Tengu did not speak, at first, and it took me a second time asking to earn his reply.

"What _is_ it?" I demanded, turning to see the strange almost embarrassed look on the Tengu's face.

"It is sex," he finally spat out. "You must have sex with him. It is the only way."

I looked back at the ronin, whom was groaning in agony once more, and almost lost my consciousness too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> I'm about to put my "mommy" hat on again so be warned.
> 
> Hearing about Eddie Van Halen's death, I am worried about you. I know you smoke a lot and drink and I want you to be careful, please. Yeah, I know you're a grown man and you can live your own life. But I'll be darned if I don't mention it and let you know that I want you to be okay. 
> 
> Speaking of your mom, I hope she bugs you about stuff like that and is/was a good mother. I mean, I saw her at the Oscar's...and, Keanu, please don't take offense but...is she real? This is a bad joke but I wasn't sure if when she reaches a certain age she should go to the rest home or the wax museum. :/ Her boobs look better than mine and I'm 15 years younger than you! :O As my sis said, she's more plastic than woman now. Sorry. Please don't be mad! It's just when she isn't focusing on staying forever young, I hope she looks after you, Kim and Karina. 
> 
> I'm protective of children and you guys all might be grown up now but when I see a mom and her kids, my own dormant mommy side comes out and I get protective and don't mind my business as I probably should.
> 
> I had a great mom. She had some faults but she was really a great mother and I miss her so much.
> 
> Anyway, I want you to be healthy. And I worry about you. But it is your life. Just know there are a lot of us out here whom want you to be around for a while. 
> 
> I doubt you'd want this after all that but...*hugs* 
> 
> Okay, mommy cap off now.
> 
> Which is probably for the best because this fic is about to go in a direction where I am decidedly not acting at all like Kai's mother and Kai won't be acting at all like my son. Yup. This is where this fic earns the "E" and turns into a sexfest for a while.
> 
> You're warned about that now too.
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	19. Beeal (Mouth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taken back to the Tengu temple, Kai lies in torment until I believe I have found a possible way to save him without damning myself.

"You surely must be finding your own amusement at Kai and my own's expense," I spat at the monk.

"I would never jest about something as repugnant as human sexuality," the Tengu remarked. "Whatever created you possessed a most vile and unfathomable sense of humor."

Looking down at Kai's tormented, but still unconscious expression, I stroked his cheek. "What would I need to do?" I asked.

"It is simple, though, unsettling," the Tengu stated. "The poison of the demon has collected in the area of procreation. For the demon you encountered it always collects there. You humans do not know this, but each demon has provided you with the way to save yourself, if you are merely wise enough to try to discern it. If you make Kai release it then he will return to his former well self. However, the poison and its curse is then transferred to his lover; the poison then being inside of the mate, of course. They remain in pain until the person whom they have saved brings them to their own release."

"Does that not reinfect them?" I asked still staring at my husband's face.

"The first victim's body after the spilling posseses the necessary antidote. They remain invulnerable to a second poisoning. So long as it is the person whom saved them."

I laughed in bitter bemusement. "Tis truly a sweethearts' poisoning."

"Yes and the demon chose wisely knowing that Kai's own was married to and pregnant by another and you were merely his companion and little more."

I flinched in pain. He had rudely reminded me of where Kai's heart truly lay and given me another reason not to heal the man from his suffering besides the eternal torment and separation from my God. The ronin would not welcome the thought of making love to me, I knew. His devotion to Mika was too strong for that. As he had proven in the pit at Dejima.

"And there is nothing you can do?" I asked. "No magic?"

"No, the magic, this time, is in your flesh. I have freed you now, woman. Go back to your home. I shall bring Kai back to the temple. We shall harbour him safely there, away from other demons and the animals of the forest that would mock him, and us by extension, even if they could do him no harm."

"May I come as well?" I asked.

"I TOLD YOU TO _GO_!" he shouted in his common annoyance but uncommon anger.

"I tell you, I shall stay with my husband," I retaliated. "The bond that tied me to him was far more powerful than your magic."

The Tengu monk studied me and then sighed. "It was as I feared."

* * *

Kai was taken to the temple but they would not let me inside again to see him. I stayed outside of the structure with the womanhood that was proving to be an obstacle to my being with my suffering husband. I heard him often screaming in pain whenever he awakened and my heart bleed, like the flowers in the forest, for him. A tengu would occassionally come out bearing food for me but they showed little sympathy or warmth. Only their leader seemed fond of me in his own irritable way.

One day, I saw long lines of the demons leaving the temple and the head monk parted from them, momentarily, to speak with the plump, dirty, wrecked and alone foreigner, sitting by the wall of their temple. "We are making our pilgramage to our sacred dwelling place on the opposite side of the forest. The moon and stars placement demands it of us. We cannot take Kai with us, nor can you join us."

"It would be sacrilege?" I asked.

"Neither of you would survive," he replied. "The human skin would burn from off of your human bones. No, it has nothing to do with blaspemy. It has to do with _what_ you are. Thank your God that this forest suffers your presence as it is. You are its threat and its potential destruction; it shows more mercy than your kind will show to it. We have seen this, as well."

The monk then joined the others, floating away from me as if their feet were clouds. Only when they had left did I notice how much I had grown used to their low chantings and simply the knowledge that they were always there, at least, on the other side of the wall. Sitting on the ground, holding myself, I felt very much abandoned and alone and I prayed to keep myself company, pleading with my Lord to help me know what to do.

_"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"_

Another loud cry came from the temple and this was answer enough from God. I could not leave Kai alone in his own pain. I slowly walked to the entrance of the structure.

I was tentative at best, fearing that some spell had been used to keep lowly women such as myself away. Daring to place a foot inside the temple, I soon discovered that no such magic existed: I could enter the holy place of the Tengu and not turn to ash or experience some unexpected form of anguish. Swallowing, I walked in further seeing the house of worship but not understanding much of it. Learning more of the tengu's rituals was not what had made me defy their rules, however, and I thought that the less I looked the more my transgression might be forgiven.

Kai was the light which had drawn me and I followed the sounds of his cries, hoping to find him by judging their nearness. I would have called his name, as well, but feared that this would waken some unknown and unseen guard, whom had momentarily fallen asleep at his post. It was best to find Kai, I knew, and to be by his side during his agony.

Eventually, I found the man in a small part of the temple. It was a barren enclosure, featuring a round mat of gold where my husband had been laid. He lay on his back, his robe having fallen to his side, and his chest exposed while a blanket of brown wool covered his legs.

I rushed to the ronin and knelt by him. Placing my hands on his chest, they soon became coated in the same sweat which I saw dripping down his contorted face. His lips were almost drawn to his ears in a look of supreme torment, while his eyes were closed firmly shut. He did not see me nor know that I had come to him. Bringing my hand to his forehead, I stroked his hair and felt sweat there as well. Though he probably would not have wanted me to, I kissed his wet cheek.

Staring at his tortured expression, my thoughts went to what Kai would allow me to do to save him.

Making love to him, the act of placing the male part of him inside of my female opening seemed forbidden. He was a ronin and had made it repeatedly and perfectly clear to me that he was devoted to the daughter of Lord Asano and committed to being chaste within the sad fact that he could never be with her.

But maybe I could help him to release the poison in some other way, I pondered. Perhaps the tengu had found their minds stuck on the one known act without considering the many others.

Having worked in a pub which had housed a brothel on the floor above, I had long ago lost my ignorance that men and women could only find their pleasure in that one form of sexual connection.

"Give me a tug," was a request I had sometimes heard the drunk customers ask the other barmaids. I was fully made aware they were not referring to the women pulling on their long, coarse beards by the forceful way the men would then place the women's hands on the frightening bulges in their laps.

Hands could be used to bring a man to the point of pleasure where he would offer his seed. If I used my hands on Kai I could make him become free of the poison and save myself from having it enter me in turn.

"Would you permit this?" I asked Kai, without receiving a reply.

Before I knew it my hand had pushed away the blanket and was working the ronin's trousers down lower to his knees to reveal his long, thick piece of flesh and the swell beneath. The manhood felt soft in my hand, bearing the same sweat that the rest of his body adorned. The balls beneath it felt terribly hard and full and I knew that the poison of the vengeful demon was resting there, causing Kai to suffer without the hope of finding any healing without a sexual peaking.

Parting the sleeping ronin's legs, I positioned myself between them and began to run my hand up and down the length of the cock, finding that the sweat covering it, at least, aided me. The tube of flesh in my hand began to twitch in my hand and swell. Likewise, my husband's groans and cries of agony seemed to calm and I thought I heard pleasure appearing now too.

Responding as it was, the cock was not anywhere close enough to where it needed to be in order to release the poison. My hands were too scarred and half numb perhaps to know what that part of Kai was telling me it desired to make it closer to a spilling. I brought my hand, covered in sweat and smelling of the penis, to my hair and ran it through it in frustration. I gazed up at the ronin's face, which appeared far more relaxed but whose few small twitches promised a return to its previous pain, and then to his maddeningly one third of a hardened member under my chin...

A memory came to me then. I had seen once one of the prostitutes at work in the bar. The rooms had all been booked and she had taken her client to a far off darkened corner of the booth. Passing the table, I had thought that she had left. My eyes had turned to the man sitting there still. His expression was torn between looking as if he were feeling wonderful or some great physical pain. I was close to asking if something were wrong with him when my eyes had caught movement on his lap. Then I had seen the woman; on her knees and under the table, her face was moving up and down on her client's crotch and his long, red manhood was buried within her mouth. I stared in horror, wondering how she could place it in her mouth when he pissed out of it when I noticed her lips clenching and unclenching. The man had begun to grunt than and he had grabbed her by the hair and had begun to push her head up and down himself on his erection.

I had then found the strength to rush away in revulsion, shocked at something I had never even considered before.

Now, I was, though.

It proved a far more dangerous a proposition than using my hands, however. If Kai shed his poison inside of my mouth, I would need to spit it all out if I wanted to accept none for myself. My husband would not be willing to save me, I reminded my heart. And if I fell ill, I would never see my God or home of Snaefell again.

Staring at the cock, already losing its hardness, I heard another cry of agony from Kai and I found my head lowering and my mouth opening to receive the tip of the tube with nary another thought to my own wellbeing. The ronin's cry turned to a moan of pleasure at the moist warmth of my lips. Whereas my hands had been partially unable to feel fully the swelling of the penis, my lips and mouth felt it completely and rejoiced in the oddly pleasant experience. The organ expanded wildly from my tongue's reflexive exploration and sampling of it's flesh. The tongue's tip found the slit at its head and I heard Kai moan once more in bliss. Heat coursed through my own privates over the fuller realization that I wasn't merely saving him...I was bringing to him sensual pleasure as well.

Urged on by this knowledge, but telling myself that I was doing what I could only to call out the poison which was bringing him an existence worse than death, my mouth became bolder, tasting his sweat and the faintest hint of urine while my hand went to his balls to squeeze them and cause his seed, and the toxins mingled with it, to the boiling point.

Either Kai's inexperience was making him enjoy the own virginal workings of my mouth more or I had a natural talent for it, I quickly realized. For the ronin's member was soon fully erect and oozing some liquid inside of the mouth it was filling. Everytime I removed that same mouth and clenching lips from it, Kai would grunt in displeasure, wishing for their return and I'd spit out the liquid as quickly as I could before placing the organ back inside of me. I was discovering I could run more and more of the large piece of flesh over my lips, which seemed to delight the ronin squirming under me and making more lustful declarations of his enjoyment. Though I longed to take him deeper still and even down my throat,I knew that it was a foolish endeavor. It would be impossible to spit out a poison already halway to my stomach, so I kept it safely on my tongue instead.

"Ohhhunhhhh," Kai moaned, becoming more violent in his body's reaction to the ecstasy it was experiencing.

I caressed the beast with my tongue and suckled it lovingly and with hunger, finding myself wanting every inch of it and its eventual offering, which I had to restrain myself from swallowing.

He was close to coming. I could feel it as I spit out more fluid and he demanded inelligbly for a reunion between my mouth and his cock.

" _AHH..UHHH...UNHHH_ ," he began to shout as I felt the organ begin to convulse within my mouth, following a tightening of the balls in my hands.

Seed and poison started to flood my oral cavity, my cheeks expanding with its volumous content as my husband began to shoot off. The concoction of blessing and curse tasted both good and foul on the buds on my tongue and cheek and I struggled not to swallow as I started to slip my lips from off the spraying cock.

In his coming, I heard Kai struggling to form a coherent word with his mouth while my own finally made it over the engorged tip of his member. I believed that it would be Mika's name with which he climaxed and I tried to shield myself from the resulting pain.

I was surprised, however, when I heard a far different word on his lips.

" _ERIN_!" Kai cried out in his full, powerful and released coming.

I was so shocked and overwhelmed that I momentarily forgot what I was in the process of doing. One last spurt from the cock hitting me right on the face, Kai's knee soon afterwards was raised and hit me on the chin. From the force of the blow and the pain, I swallowed involuntarily. I felt the poison and seed flowing down the throat that had wanted to welcome my husband's penis and knew that the poison was latching onto my flesh on its journey to my stomach. Once there, it seared like fire and I felt the first sting of my torment and damnation.

"No," I whispered holding my belly.

It was only a matter of time, I realized in horror, before I exchanged places with Kai.

"Erin of Snaefell?" I heard my husband's voice say with far less rapture but blessedly free of the poison which had made him suffer.

Raising my head to see him staring at me in the first stirrings of clear consciousness, I smiled, at least, over his salvation.

"Of Snaefell and heaven once," I whispered to him sadly. "But never again."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> I got the results of my sleep test back. 
> 
> I have severe sleep apnea. :O :/
> 
> I surprisingly guessed exactly how long I managed to sleep for: 2 hours and 30 minutes. The Doctor said that during that time my breathing was shallow and stopped several times. She acted concerned and like it was pretty bad within that short time frame. She was worried what it would have been like for longer. 
> 
> I never reached REM. Funny, I dreamt though. I remember one of them was about those monsters that used to be on cereal boxes: Count Chocula, Frankenberry etc... My sis and I had been listening to Monsters Go Disco in honor of Halloween so that, no doubt, influenced that one. :/ I didn't know you could dream without REM but you can.
> 
> She wanted me to go in and do another sleep study with a CPAP machine. I said that I couldn't though. It was with those 26 wires again and I said there was no chance I'd get any better of a sleep with those things still on. Sigh.
> 
> I'm still getting a CPAP though and they will study me from it.
> 
> Last night, going to sleep was odd knowing that it meant I'd stop breathing without knowing it. It was kind of scary. I mean, I want to meet you one day, finish these stories and get my BRZRKR comics! 
> 
> But I had a dream of you last night. I was at a movie theater. You were in the film but somehow spotted me from within it. Then I saw you in a few rows ahead inside of the theater. I thought that you liked me. You kept looking behind at me from your seat and smiling and kind of joking/teasing me. I was shy but trying to smile back. Suddenly we were up on the balcony floor outside of the washroom. We kind of talked. But what I really remember is you standing behind me once. It was like I could really feel you and like you were really there behind me. And then, for some reason, I kept wanting to touch your left knee with my left hand. I did it too, eventually.
> 
> I liked that part of the dream but it moved on from there, as dreams do. Then you went back to your friends and it was like you didn't know me anymore.
> 
> Do you think dreams mean anything? My grandfather had this big book about them, like a dictionary, and every morning he'd look his up. 
> 
> I think sometimes they do and more often they don't.
> 
> I'm still wondering about the significance of why I touched your knee though. In any case, it was nice to feel you standing behind me.
> 
> And your knee was nice too.
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	20. Jeebyrt (Sacrifice)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kai learns of my sacrifice and makes his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Can't believe I got my Zootopia fic updated and Tynwald all in the same day! :D <3
> 
> Edit: Fixed this chapter after realizing I had forgotten a previous and important plot point. :/

A bit of Kai's cum mixed with the poison hung from the center of my bottom lip. I saw the ronin's eyes go towards it in questioning fascination and watch, as well, as it fell like a single droplet of rain to the spent penis it had come from only moments before. The penis he looked at with the same mesmerized curiosity, wondering why it was raw looking and bared, no doubt.

The poison, meanwhile, was creeping into me, spreading like veins throughout my body but coursing with pain instead of blood. I grabbed my stomach and cried, collapsing to the Temple floor beside my exposed husband. My cheek pressed into dirt, I viewed his dawning realization of what his seed coating my mouth meant and the reality of what he surely had mistaken for a dream as he had gone from the throes of agony to ecstasy and finally to his current dazed but slowly wakening and well state.

"You..." he started to say, knowing I had sucked him into climax.

"Yes," I said, tears forming in and then falling from my eyes to turn the dirt beneath my head to grime. "The demon poisoned you," I defended. "The Tengu leader told me the only way to save you was to make you spill your seed. But...I swallowed it by accident. "

I watched as Kai's face turned red while he was torn between shame and gratitude, feeling a little of both.

"Now the poison is in me," I mumbled, sensing it swelling inside and trying to pull me into a hell without death.

"How can you be saved?" Kai asked, rising and hastily and unsuccessfully covering himself to come kneel by my side.

I wept bitterly. "You carry the answer inside of you," I said. "I need to be known, as a man knows a woman. But only one whom has been cured is invulnerable to being poisoned for a second time."

The hands that Kai had on my shoulder and waist faltered as he learned the cure. As I gazed up into his calm face, my own palm came to cup his bearded cheek. "No. I did not think you would be willing to pay the price," I said gently. "I will face my existence then in pain, with neither hope of heaven nor relief of death."

"There must be another way," Kai argued, his brown eyes sparkling with something I vainly hoped were tears.

I shook my head and bit my tongue, drawing blood to mix with the taste of his semen and the gall of the toxin. "Not for me but for you, yes," I stated. "The Tengu have released us from the bond, which was your curse and my blessing. You are free now to go wherever thou whilst without me. Go Kai of Ako...leave me here. With any hope, the Tengu will have mercy upon me for trespassing in their Temple and allow me to stay where my husband spent his youth until the world ceases its endless spinning."

The pain was incomparable. Nothing in my existence could have prepared me for a sensation that was akin to having each of my organs and cells twisted and then pierced and shredded. Yet, the fact that I had saved Kai from that fate himself brought me some solace amidst the torture. If he could live now free of it, I could find one ray of hope within the prison of my torment.

Still, the ronin was not looking at me as if I had freed him at all. In his eyes was a desolate sorrow I had never seen in them before, not even when he had stared at the pregnant Mika with her husband. The tears I thought wished for in vain now fully came to his eyes and began to fall down his face as the drop of his coming had similarly fallen from my lip.

Another wave of the poison's cruel force took hold of me and made my face contort in its own agony before I went limp in his arms, weakened by it.

NO!" Kai roared in anguish and his arms, regaining their strength held me in an almost fierce desperation.

The ronin suddenly began to reposition my body, sitting me on his lap so that my buttocks was pressed against his softened cock. His hand creeped up my dress and with a loud rip, which disturbed the Temple's silence, he tore my underclothes off from my bottom, throwing them to the side. He lifted the skirt of the dress and suddenly I could feel the man's member, still wet with his seed and my spit, against the tender skin of my backside. A strong throbbing occurred between my own legs almost strong enough to overpower the poison.

I could feel Kai suddenly grinding behind me and I knew he was trying to once more coax that part of himself to become both hard and awake.

"Do not," I moaned, fearful that he was making too rash a decision, one not truly meant but born simply out of compassion and gratitude.

He would not heed my words, however; his hands instead, moved to my large chest, starting to fondle it in order to ignite his arousal more deeper. Finding the cloth there too thick for his liking, the ronin tore this as well, my breasts spilling out and soon finding his grasping hands.

"Kai!" I cried.

My nipples were tingling and growing from his touch and he took to rubbing and pulling on them, similar to how the women worked the teats of cows and goats in the village, but far more slowly and sensuously, bringing pleasure with each working of his fingertips. This feeling too overwhelmed the effects of the poison and travelled straight to the area between my legs which seemed so strongly connected to my large breasts and the nubs that Kai was teasing.

I felt that part of him growing harder beneath me, urged once more to life by his fingers exploration of my body and the moans and cries he was causing me to make without my being able to stop myself.

"Oh KAI!" I exclaimed, his rubbing of my breasts and nipples growing more violent as was also the rubbing of his cock on my large and rounded ass.

The sleeping snake was quickly becoming a serpent once more, hot and throbbing also and now spilling out its fluid, which was not my poison anymore but rather an said to my salvation.

"No," I moaned, wanting him so badly that it was wounding me far more than the poison but knowing this was not what he had ever professed to wanting in return. "You don't have..."

Quickly my husband turned my face to his and muted my words with the crashing of his lips upon my own. A kiss forming between us, hungry and impassioned, I felt his fully wakened dragon journeying into the cavern which awaited it, never having been broken in before.

The swollen penis caused destruction in its wake, feeling as if he were tearing me below with his entrance (when I had believed I had damaged myself there enough months before) as surely as the man had ripped my worn clothing. But this pain was welcomed and had been desired for longer than I could confess. My tunnel walls clasped around the ronin's manhood, reveling in the feeling of him and I cried out as my body found itself tremoring again as he had made me do that one night in our cell in Dejima.

Our kiss broken, I leaned forward, panting, knowing that Kai had not finished with me. His salvation bringing piece of flesh was nowhere near its own coming.

Like a man starved of the food he had been requiring but abstaining from, Kai's hands explored my body, still manipulating my large breasts but exploring lower to the folds he had entered. He found my bud and fingered it with interest making me aroused once again.

"Kai," I murmured again and turned my head and we kissed each other for a second time, not as violent as the first but still emboldened with a forceful passion.

His thrusting was picking up momentum, lost inside of my body and seemingly unable to do anything but enjoy it. He was grunting occassionally as he pushed, whenever our lips had not become locked again, and I saw fully revealed the animal of lust and desire I had momentarily glimpsed beneath the fighting pit.

My own body was far from the shy woman I normally was. Kai had always helped me shed that timidness and could coax out a more brazen and desirous creature lurking beneath my gentle surface.

Moving together as one on the Temple floor we had both dropped our mutual reserve; we had both given our virginity to each other, boldly and in that moment free from either regrets or shame. This was how a man and a woman were made to love each other, I knew: a giving and a recieving, a bestowing and accepting, and in full sensuous revelling of what the souls and bodies could offer together.

The top of my dress had completely fallen away from our movement and Kai was kissing my naked shoulders and the crook of my neck while his hands continued to delight in grabbing and squeezing anything that they laid upon and found to their liking.

"I'm coming...I'm coming again!" I screamed, his fingers back to playing with my nipples.

Kai moaned, deeply a sound which seemed to emit straight from his groin and I knew that this time he would find release as well.

The sounds of our mutual climax surrounded us and my opening began to furiously clamp on that piece of Kai which had opened it for the first time. With its vigourous pumping, my husband offered me his seed and salvation and we were kissing until the final unleashing and hungry grasp.

In the process, the poison within my body flowed out from me, no longer a danger to the already infected ronin. I felt the threat now gone, my husband having protected me as our wedding vows had promised.

Parting from each other, our eyes met and held, some strange secret thing passing between us that did not need translation but existed without language. We were both survivors of the demon's cruelty and had escaped with our lives and our souls. But what of our hearts, I tried to ask him but Kai's eyes suddenly became guarded again, the secretive communication halted, leaving us only foreign companions again, wedded but not united.

Kai removed his hands from my breasts, but I thought I felt a brief, stolen caress first before he then gently slid out from me, leaving me feeling empty and deprived of that which my body had become accustomed to. I groaned at the loss but while ghe oo looked as if he desired a return, Kai remained separate from me.

"So, you have done what was needed," we heard a voice suddenly say and Kai and I looked in unison to see the Tengu Monk staring at us.

Protectively, Kai came behind me again, shielding me from the Tengu's eyes. Leaning over me, he wrapped his arms against my chest, making me wonder if the Monk had lied to me regarding the Tengu's interest in human sexuality.

"I hoped you would," the demon stated. "But you have transgressed inside of our Temple and, thus, you must be cleansed."

"And not the Temple itself?" I asked, my breasts pressing into the flesh on the ronin's arms and making him tremble behind me.

"Silence!" the Monk spat. "You shall go to the Eien Forest. Only when you are assured that the poison is gone from you both shall you leave it."

Kai and I looked at one another from over my shoulder, the skin of which felt damp with sweat and the heat of his breath.

"Eien," the ronin repeated, his eyes never leaving mine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> あなたへの私の愛は永遠です  
> (Anata e no watashi no ai wa eiendesu)
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	21. Pyshoon (Poison)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kai and I enter the Eien Forest to make sure that we are free from the poison.

We travelled to the Eien forest together in relative silence, Kai and myself. Our marriage of convenience had now been consumated and the part of me that had held him in that act of salvation and consumation, yearned to know him again. Still, my husband refused to look at me now that he had exited me and stayed several feet ahead, guiding me to the forest where time stayed always the same while the world moved on around it.

When we entered Eien, I knew for the sounds of the forest becsme that of sacred chanting and everything changed color to blue, a color most associated with heaven and those things divine and unreal.

Kai dropped what he was carrying and turned to look at me for the first time since we had begun our journey. "Are you hungry?" he asked.

I nodded, knowing it had been a while since my last meal and longer even for he, whom had been under the poison's spell for so much longer.

"I will catch us some fish from the lake," he mumbled. "You can gather the wood."

"Thank you," I stated and watched as Kai offered me a small nod before heading to the lake, where once I had used my dress to similary capture supper.

Now searching the woods for any branches, logs or twigs, I found my legs unsure and trembling. It was as if for the first time with the ronin out of my vision what had happened between us finally managed to course through my being and leave me feeling like I had a storm inside of me. The legs Kai had been between hours before started to give out and I could not save myself in time before I fell to the forest floor, my arms weak now and not strong enough to hold me up; my face fell into the dirt. When I raised my head, I found that I must have been crying as well, for dirt had become mud and I was covered in it. Breathing heavily, I rose to my feet and resumed the task I had been given of gathering while my husband hunted.

When he finally returned, it was to find me quiet, shaking and dirty, preparing the collected wood for the fire.

"What happened?" he asked, staring at the mud covered sight of me, unable to look away now even if he wanted to.

"I fell," I said. It was as close to the truth as I could safely say. I could not confess that the memory of his having me had made my knees seem things made of unstable substance; the whole situation of the near loss of him turning into an act where he had both saved me and answered my long unfulfilled sexual need had overwhelmed me.

I fell seemed as good an answer as I would ever find. I had fallen into him, after all, and now there was no escspe.

"You should go and wash while I take care of these," he stated, kneeling.

"You do not wish for me to clean them?" I asked.

He looked to my similarly dirt encrusted hands and bemusement flashed inside of his dark eyes for the first time in what seemed like centuries. "No," he returned. "Go."

I stood, my legs still unsure, but I managed to walk past him and start the short trek to the lake.

"Erin of Snaefell, maybe you should use the chance to wash your whole self," came the suggestion from over the shoulder of his turned back.

Not sure if the comment was meant as insult or not, I went and collected the robe that the Tengu Monk had offered from out of a bag. I mumbled another expression of gratitude and walked towards the lake, my legs shaking.

Throwing off my dress the moment I reached the lake's edge, I walked into it, hoping that I would somehow find more strength perversely in the water. I dared to walk only as far as where shallow waters became deep and the taking of more steps became dangerous. Splashing the water on my face, I was no longer certain what was water or tears and then washed lower on my now exposed and glistening body. The Eien forest continued its cursed hum as I continued to wash but now it was becoming something familiar instead of startling.

What was not, however, was movement by the bank I had just left. Behind a tree, I caught sight of brown the color of Kai's robe and thought I saw fingers glimpsed holding its trunk. I lowered my head quickly, pretending that I had seen nothing and was merely cleansing myself. If I began to wash areas that would cause any stirrings inside a witness' eyes, my hands paying attention to my breasts, groin and buttocks, what was that to the birds and rodents of the woods, I thought? And if my lower region was catching fire the more I was aware that dark eyes were watching me, what cared the absent wind or the muted sun? At one stage, the washing almost finished, I turned away to give opportunity for the shadow I saw to the left of the tree to flee. As it must have done, for when I turned back it was gone.

Returning in the Tengu robe, far more concealing than the Mika one had been, I found Kai ready to start cooking the fish, a pained expression on his face.

"Did it take you so long to clean them then?" I asked with a hint of coyness while I sat on the ground opposite to him.

"The poison as come upon me again," Kai stated, his voice thick. "I feel unwell."

"What can be done?" I asked in concern, only to watch Kai stand slowly and walk towards me in a pace similar in nature.

His gaze fell down to my face; staring at him from my place on the ground, I saw between us the hardness of the ronin's arousal underneath his robe.

"What you did to me while I was sleeping," Kai said, his voice growing rougher still. "Do it to me now."

"Do you remember? I asked.

"Yes," he replied. "Vaguely, as if in a dream."

Holding his stare, I got to my knees. My fingers undid the ties of my husband's robe, while our eyes remained focused solely on the other. Done with the bind there, I turned to those of the coverings of his legs and let them fall to the forest floor. The ronin now stood before me exposed from the waist down and I brought my face to his half hard penis.

"You mean this?" I asked and let my tongue slowly lick the underside of it, lolling lazily on the head.

Deeply, Kai inhaled, trying to gather strength from the woods surrounding us as he clearly enjoyed what I had just done to him as any flesh and blood man would do: from king to peasant, thief to samurai. "Yes," he said softly, his cock being far louder as it swelled more evidently before me.

I nodded boldly grasping the ronin's naked back thighs and pushing my head down on his stiffening cock. My mouth once more eagerly did what it had already done once before, only now the man receiving its efforts was awake and fully aware. I listened to his responding noises as he experienced what my lips and tongue could do to that part he had long denied from any form of contact with another human being. Kai was doing his best to remain his usually stoic self but it was difficult as his cock began to spit out liquid.

"Where...where did you learn this?" he asked, his voice hitching in his pleasure.

The cock now in my grasp, I looked up both lustily and innocently, two opposing states. "The whores where I worked," I replied. "I caught one once doing this to a customer."

Kai seemed embarrassed to have me doing tricks learnt from women of the night on his honorable body but I thoughg I might know how to wipe away the guilt.

I began to kiss the risen shaft upwards and then down to the balls beneath it. My tongue went over their surface and Kai made some exclamation under his breath, a muttering that grew louder as I took to suckling them while pumping his cock.

More liquid spilling now, my lips took the slitted head and sucked and licked the fluid off until I felt the penis begin to convulse and shoot off violently in my mouth. My eyes widened involuntarily before I started to swallow the offering, Kai crying out in his coming.

Some more of the poison presumably out of his body, I helped Kai redress, aware that I was painfully aroused now too. I could not ask the ronin to help me, however, seeing that he was back to avoiding my eyes as he returned quickly to the preparing of the fish.

"Here," he said, placing some on a plate and handing it to me before facing away while he ate his own.

I consumed the meal, unsatisfied and restless, the juice of my husband far more appetizing than that of the fish.

* * *

Nighttime.

We slept separately by the fire. Kai was presumably fast asleep while I was lost in my arousal which had never completely gone away. There was a throbbing down below and believing it to be safe, I kicked my blanket off and began to play with myself. My fingers found the nub and I rubbed it frantically, imagining it was Kai doing it instead. Still desperate and displeased, I opened my robe while my hands found my large breasts to caress and pull on my nipples, squeezing the large mounds in remembrance of Kai's action. Nothing was good. I wanted something very _specific_ inside of me and my own manipulations were all done in vain.

I heard a slight quick intake of breath behind me and flung my head back to see Kai's eyes watching in the firelight. His face had an intense cast to it and I knew he had been studying me for longer than I had known. From this angle also, I could see that he had become aroused in the watching.

"The poison?" he asked.

"Yes," I stated.

"Shall I help you?"

"Please," I pleaded, not bothering to hide my need.

"Then I will," he agreed to the task, standing and failing to acknowkedge that from the size of his erection his own need would be taken care of as well.

I was waiting for him to move on top of me, instead getting to his knees, he said, "On your hands and knees, facing away from me."

Nodding, I acquiesced, and felt Kai lifting up the skirt of the robe, exposing my buttocks. Longingly, with strength filled hands, the ronin grasped my ample cheeks and squeezed them after an almost deceptively gentle carress. His thumb dissappeared into the slit and made its way from the top to the more desired hole, dipping in and making me cry out, disrupting the peace of the forest.

I bit my lip, feeling as if I had committed sacrilege in the holy space of Eien, only to cause yet another one as I felt Kai entering into the same opening he had touched, this time not with his thumb but the part I had missed and desired so badly.

"KAI!" I screamed out, feeling wonderful bliss spreading throughout my whole body from the return of his cock.

I heard a muffled moan behind me as Kai experienced his own bliss at being enveloped. "Kai," I whispered more quietly, a tear rolling down my cheek.

In pleasure, I felt him begin his thrusting, answering my call for a filling and rubbing from within and for his own physical need of friction on his cock and to have it held somewhere warm, tight and moist.

And how wet it was starting to feel! I marveled at the vast amount of fluid gushing from where our bodies were linked and the heat and pressure that surrounded it. I was far more vocal than the ronin in my ecstasy, forgoing all shyness and respect for the chanting of the woods. My body could not hold back nor my mouth contain the screams issuing forth from it, until I started to pant, getting tired from the pleasure but desiring more.

Meanwhile, in his pounding, Kai was gradually becoming more free in his own responses. He was grunting and eventually becoming loud in his own cries, his hands still clutching my bottom while he pushed into me, hitting my clit and womb it felt simultaneously.

"Kai! Kai! Please..." I was begging, feeling a need to release all the joy he had brought with his member's constant sliding up and down along the place meant for it. "Kai...I want...I...I..."

It happened then, with a thrust so powerful that I felt I had become yet another one of the ronin's victims, one whom had experienced his violence but had survived it and been blessed all the more for the fact.

I was crying out words of gratitude as I felt my lover finding his own climax inside my body and to my declaration of how wonderful he had taken care of the poison deep inside of me. Our cries, faded into deep breaths until he suddenly slipped out and I set free one last cry at the loss.

"Thank you, Kai of Ako," I managed to say breathlessly, as I heard him rising to his feet.

"You are welcome, Erin of Snaefell," came his reply before he turned and walked away from me.

When I curled back under the cover, his seed falling down my inner thigh, I noticed that the man was once more facing away from me.

* * *

The following day, Kai and I hardly spoke but kept to ourselves in our contemplations and strange stirrings. The forest continued its chanting and when night came we were both grateful, I believed.

Until the chill came with it, forcing me to where Kai lay sleeping.

Crawling under the covers, I faced the ronin. "It is cold," I whispered.

"Yes," he replied, tensing.

"Can I stay?" I asked, lying my head against his chest where his heart was quickly beating.

"Yes," he said again.

Within a minute, or whatever passed for it within the timeless forest, Kai was kissing me. It was an impassioned thing filled with all that which we had denied ourselves throughout the day. He tossed the blanket from us both despite the chill and looked at my body lying there to his side. Hands flew to my knees as they were spread as he positioned himself between them. I was opened before him and the ronin was eyeing me hungrily as he saw whatever the firelight was revealing to him: what I knew was throbbing, was enflamed and felt wet once more. I threw my head back as Kai's own disappeared up my robe and he began his feeding on me.

Another cry came from my lips as the ronin rolled his tongue around the nub and then kissed and suckled it. When he pushed his tongue inside of the hole he had filled twice, I whimpered, arching my back. I watched over my breasts as he lifted his head to see what I had done and it was framed between my raised knees.

I lay back looking up at my husband and writhed in my want of him.

Suddenly Kai was on his knees between the legs he had separated himself. His hands grasped the edges of my robe, by my chest, and ripped it open, exposing my breasts to him, which he viewed in even larger appetite. His head falling to them, licking and tasting, kissing and sucking, I held him to me, overjoyed at the feel of the weight of my breasts meeting the weight of Kai's head. I kissed the top of it and squealed when he entered me at the same time he took to sucking on a nipple.

"Oh Kai.. .Kai!" I moaned, whipping my head back and forth as he resumed his thrusting into me, an act that ever only seemed momentarily interrupted after his taking of me inside of the Tengu temple.

Eventually our lips met in a passionate kiss, which brought about my coming and Kai's own. My tunnel was clenching about his spilling penis again making me moan in praise, delighting in my husband's seed.

Panting again, our eyes locked, it was realized in unison that this had been our first time knowing one another face to face. As if in shame, Kai lowered his head to the large swell of my breast and rested it there as it heaved against his cheek, his breath making my nipple tingle once more.

"I just need to get all of the poison out," he defended his actions before kissing the soft flesh of my breast and then the titillated nipple again.

"Yes, the poison," I said in tainted pleasure, knowing that was what I was to him now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> If you ever read these, Keanu, I sincerely request you read the letter posted yesterday to Chapter 3 of "The Eye of an Aesthete Beholder." I have wanted to say that to you for so long now, if you missed it, I would kick myself for posting it under a not very much read entry to this series.
> 
> Interesting week to say the least now that it's almost over.
> 
> Started with a potentially wonderful unanswered question. 
> 
> But it led me to look you up on Google news, which led to me seeing some stories with you and AG. I know I'll never be in your life, so I try to avoid those. It hurts too much.
> 
> I want you to know, though, I don't social media. Only a few tweets now and then. And I talk to my sis at Facebook when she's away. I used to promote these at Tumblr but I gave up. Now I am only here and at the BZRKR Kickstarter page. Those are my haunts. I did leave one comment at Gossip Cop. You see, I see what your fans are saying and it can get quite brutal. I don't want to be like that.
> 
> But, still, I will voice that I don't like AG but if I have anything bad to say about her I'll say it here. There are too many truthful negative things about her. The evidence is too strong for me to think she's nice. I mean, today I saw that she has a charity with her name before the word love. Ummm...that made me almost laugh hysterically on the floor. That was *bad*. What, is she going for, a monopoly on the word? Who the heck is that pompous? Sheesh! 
> 
> I do give to charity now and then but you aren't supposed to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. And I'm only mentioning it now because it's funny when the charity phones about a month later looking for more money and I have to tell them that I'm pretty poor and only give what I can when I can. You should see how fast they hang up then. :/
> 
> But, anyway, back to the start of the week, I'm going to be like Tiny Tim and just try to be happy about you. Because it made me happy. So much so, my CPAP provider was shocked about how I looked. I mean, she kept saying how great I looked and wondered what else I was doing to look so good. I wanted to say it was you, only you, but didn't. Then two guys said hello to me too, like they thought I was actually pretty. But, while I was flattered, I only have eyes for you. Never doubt that okay? It doesn't matter. But still never doubt it.
> 
> And if I end up finding out it wasn't what I thought it was, so what? It's just like that game Trouble. I just hit the dice bubble again and start over. 
> 
> By the way, I saw photos of you with Alex from Jimmy Fallon today. I'm glad to see your hair growing out. I was worried for you with it short. You looked so cold! But, Keanu, you're very thin. I'm gonna have to put some meat on you. Can I bustle around your kitchen and bake you some holiday cookies? I mean, AG hopefully won't bug me while I'm in there. I'm not always the greatest baker; there won't be any opportunity for her to get fame or fortune out of it.
> 
> Sorry. Couldn't help myself. Or didn't want to.
> 
> But, anyway, I really must plump you up. I feel like Mrs. Claus with Santa in that Rankin Bass Rudolph classic. "Eat, Keanu, eat!"
> 
> Speaking of that special, I used to be scared by the Bumble. I'd hop off from my mother's lap and run away, hiding and peeking around the corner until he was off of the screen and it was safe to come out. That's what I'd probably do with AG now too. Peek around the corner of your house until she was gone and it was safe to come out. Because she scares me just as bad in her own way.
> 
> Sorry, I couldn't resist that one either. 
> 
> But on a better note to end this, thank you, Keanu. If that was real, which I'm still not sure, I don't want anything else for Christmas. That would be enough.
> 
> Although, I wouldn't be averse to having you under my tree either.
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	22. Mayragh (Mother)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kai tries to free himself from the poison that has claimed him.

If I was the poison inside of Kai's veins, he seemed to believe the best cure was to take another dosage of me whenever the urge came upon him.

Over the next few days in the Eien forest, Kai took to knowing me continually while I accepted, giving to him the hair of the dog which had bit him wholeheartedly, basking in what I could receive before he deprived me of it forever.

I was never completely sure when the desire would take hold of him. Once I was bringing collected wood back for the evening's fire when the ronin grabbed me from behind, overtaking me. The bits of logs and kindling fell from my arms as I felt Kai's own wrap around my waist. His lips were on the bare skin of my neck, sending its own fire throughout my nerves to all of those places now well acquainted with the man. I cried out in shock and pleasure, made aware of the ronin's cock as stiff as one of the fallen pieces of wood scattered around us, pressing into me insistently. His hands went to my breasts, loosing them from the robe again to squeeze and fondle. I moaned again, being pushed to the forest floor and feeling my legs being spread. Kai came inside and his fierce pounding began, while I lay in the dirt, my breasts becoming smeared with mud and leaves.

Words tried to escape from me at first but failed, only sounds of ecstasy emerging. Finally I was able to form some cries for the ronin to keep on doing as he wished to me, my body deriving delight from helping the man work out his poison.

"Kai...Kai...ahhhh," I moaned, breathing hard until a violent coming came upon me and I wept and groaned, moaned and cooed into the earth, some smearing my lips in the attempt of trying to catch my breath.

My husband spilled his seed in equal violence and then roughly rolled me onto my back. I lay before him, robe parted, large breasts covered in grime and my legs now tented, his fluid pooled and oozing from the crevice he had just departed from. Though he had just had me, the ronin looked hungry for more and I wriggled in expectation feeling my desire only growing instead of being satiated.

The ronin, now as lost to his lust as he had once been consumed by his chastity, ran a large, strong hand up my thigh and to my belly and breasts. In the mud, he wrote with his fingertip a japanese character.

"What is it?" I asked, breathlessly, bringing my foot to his backside to stroke it; I eyed first his face, then his cock and then his face once more.

"It is my name," Kai stated and began to play with my nipples, rubbing the cool mud into them and causing them to tingle and stiffen. "You're dirty, Erin of Snaefell," he chastised, his dark eyes going from my filthy bust and then to the split wet mound he had ravaged.

"And who is to blame for that?" I asked, bringing my foot to his cock, which I teased brazenly.

"Then it is only right that I be the one to amend it," he declared, scooping me up towards him and into a kiss more heated than the fire ever would have been.

* * *

In the lake, we made love again.

It started with Kai scubbing my chest and stomach and any other area he had made and then deemed dirty. I could tell from the boldness and confidence of his hands that he had longed for this since his watching me in supposed secret from behind the tree. I threw my head back, experiencing the sensual touch of a man whom had quickly learned to handle a woman's body as he had likewise mastered the sword required to be a samurai. Not that his mouth was poorly skilled either. He kissed my lips hungrily and then worked his way lower, tasting the teats he had moments before rubbed with mud. Falling lower, his hands spread my legs again, making them rest on his strong, broad shoulders submerged under water and pushed his head between my legs, feasting on me.

I was forcefully moving my hips, both Kai and myself's action causing reckless disturbance to the otherwise peaceful water. I felt my husband's tongue and lips upon me, his hands cupping my ass. I came quickly again, the ronin's handiwork on my sensitive chest already having brought me close to my release. After my crying out his name, Kai's face broke through the water and his arms grasped me tightly. My arms were draped over his shoulders, my lips on his as that swollen part of him slid inside of me effortlessly to find and receive his own pleasure. Taking hold of my plump ass again, Kai pushed himself into his other coming and we clutched one another passionately in the lake's warm strange waters.

"I wish I could see you once more in that Miko uniform," he stated, his voice husky with want and remembrance before he kissed my cheek and then practically devoured my panting mouth.

* * *

Before our sleeping, I found, waiting by the flames, the dress that Kai had confessed he yearned to see me in once again. Apparently the forest had ears or we were not alone, I mused, dressing my now clean body in the garb of white and red. Feeling pure in the readornment of it, I walked shyly to where my husband was kneeling and meditating before we retired for whatever counted for a day within the forest.

"Kai," I said and caused the man to turn his head and find me standing there playing the role of foreign and chaste maiden protector of Japanese shrine.

I walked forward until I fell on my knees before the ronin whom was staring at me in want and confusion.

He looked on the verge of asking how I had come across it, but seeing me looking at him stopped, choosing to pull me closer to him instead, my soft, big chest pushed into his broad, but far less swelled, one. "This forest is the one for miracles; who am I to ask how?" he said. "Better to just accept the blessing."

He lowered his head to my bosom and kissed it reverently.

I pushed it upward into the kiss, always relishing the feeling of the man's lips upon it. I was enjoying it so much, I failed to notice Kai's fingers finding the bow of the hakama and loosening it. The kimono fell open, revealing my breasts and I gasped in surprise.

"There," Kai said with a smile which betrayed the man of fleshly desires that had been sucessfully repressed for too long. "I remember you in our prison in Dejima...how your kosode would open. In the beginming you were modest...until you started wanting me...then you craved my stare...and how hard I had to fight from giving it to you."

His confessing lips found my nipples each in turn and sucked on them long and slowly, his tongue flicking their peaks, as they emerged in his mouth. Pressure built between my thighs, warm and wet and I made a vocal cry of a need both sexual and emotional.

Kai rested his head against my left breast and I felt his beard against skin almost too tender for it but which welcomed and withstood it all the same. "I used to wake up so hard in my want of you," he revealed further, making my eyes widen and tear up. "It took all of my resolve not to turn over and take you, Erin..."

He was back to kissing the body which had tormented him, dressed once again in the outfit that had also tempted him with its forbidden nature. My head fell back again and Kai clutched my buttocks, his fingers digging in despite the fabric of the hakama.

"Let me love you with them," I said. Raising my head, in the request, I looked down into the ronin's face. He nodded, not knowing what I meant, but surrendering nonetheless.

I slid my bossom down his body until it found his hardened member. Kai groaned from the feel of the breasts weight on him and further cried out as I worked on freeing his poor caged beast from his own robe and then nestling it within my cleavage. He moaned as I grabbed the side swell of my chest and began to move the breasts along the shaft of his phallus, using my breath to heave them and to offer more stimulation. Kai looked down to see the head of his penis peeking out between the snowy hills and looked on in fascination of my work which felt more like play. To further his pleasure, I kissed the reddened tip and then began to lick it and embrace it with tightened lips.

"Erin..." he said, repeating the word which had caused me to swallow his poison and eventually give my own to him.

Busily working his now leaking manhood, I was startled as the man grabbed me and pulled me upward. Grabbing hold of my hips, Kai impaled my aching body on his now erect and very angry cock, burying his face in the breasts now covered with the fluid that heralded his coming.

I gasped again, the pleasure almost unbearable of his length filling me and his mouth kissing and devouring my chest, as if it was some long hungered for meal.

In the forest around us, I saw shadows moving suddenly of familiar shapes but I could hardly feel shame or fear when enduring Kai, my ronin husband's, lustful need.

Kai's tongue ran up my nipple, toying with the tip before another deep suckle and I whimpered like an adult child filled with agonized sexual bliss.

The chanting of the forest grew and I knew it was the Tengu now joining their voices to the natual holy hymn of the forest.

"Oh Kai...my Kai...my sweet, sweet Kai," I whispered, holding his head to the breasts he was adoring. "I love you...I love you beyond the word love."

He kissed me on my chest again, right where my heart would be, then clutched my rear cheeks, pushing upwards, making me go from tender whispers to loud, rapturous screams.

The Tengu continued their song, watching their favored son give into his lust and I vaguely was aware of how they were either very curious or far from immune or disgusted by the act of human sex as they had claimed; a thought that had occurred to me more than once before. My robe still opened, my breasts on display and Kai boldly feasting on them, I knew that I should be fearful of our watchers but remained only grateful to them for their hand in saving and raising the man whose lips roamed the soft, smooth surface of my bosom.

If they were Kai's first fathers, I suddenly felt Kai's mother as he focused his love on my willing breasts and fed from them like both a needful child and a physically excited man. His own mother stolen, I would play the part of mother and wife simultaneously, I accepted, to help heal the man, giving to him both what he had lost and what he had denied himself of.

More thrusting, more grinding; more sounds of passion and more breaths deep and low with an emotional carnality.

We came together as the song reached its own climax around us, something powerful and sacred in the secret woods of the small island known as Japan.

The release was as violent as always, but sweet in its own fashion. Kai's lips left the swell of my bosom to find my own and I convulsed on his lap, kissing him with as much force as the warrior possessed himself. The kiss and the spilling then over, after what felt like an eternity and a second combined, we stared at one another, trying to catch our breath and slow our hearts.

Falling to the floor, our eyes held and locked, I saw in the firelight tears on his cheeks to match the ones falling from my eyes. "I think I am free of the poison," Kai whispered to me very gently.

I could only nod in sorrow, assuming it meant he was free from me as well.

* * *

In the first rays of blueish sun, I crawled from my husband's arms. I spared him one last look, while he lay sleeping so peacefully that he might as well have been an angel of God instead of a ronin of Lord Asano. Then I turned away from him and ran.

Free now from the poison, I could not stand a return to how it had once been between us. Best to leave now, I warned myself, on a better note and save myself the pain.

I felt strange the closer to the forest's edge that I came, until stepping over the threshhold I saw the reason. My stomach was pushing against the hakama more than my weight permitted. Inside of the timeless forest, I had not known the truth of what my lovemaking with Kai had wrought; free from its grasp, the truth was revealed.

I was in the first stages of a pregnancy.

One I must endure alone.

Crying, I rushed forward, a frightened mother, leaving her child's father behind to awaken alone, free and ignorant of the result of our mutual poisoning and his subsequent healing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> Today was one of those "Can't Win" days. Those are the days that my OCD wins and gets the better of me and I feel like a failure.
> 
> Failing aside, though, I'll be darned if I don't get an update in. I only have about 6330 words left (under that with the posting of this) until I reach my goal of 900000 words written for this series in a year, Keanu! I can't let my OCD and anxiety win! It means too much to me.
> 
> You mean too much to me. 
> 
> So here's another entry on our way to an anniversary...
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3
> 
> P.S. You still cheer me up when I think of that look you give in "To the Bone." That never fails. And you are still my Timothy. *hugs* Thank you for that. :D <3


	23. Vooilley (Blessing)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I seek the Tengu Monk's help, once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to post an update. However, today was busy and I was tired from having to walk a fair distance while my heart and breathing are still giving me trouble and my soul is tired too from its own bit of searching.
> 
> So, I decided on splitting the planned chapter of this into two.

Without Kai has my guide, I travelled the forest not knowing where I was going. Thrust into the middle of my first pregnancy, I was equally struggling with the larger weight within. Tears streaming down my face, my legs eventually gave out beneath me and I fell to the ground, holding my belly to help protect it from the fall.

"MONK!" I cried out in desperation into the woods, sending a bird flying off from the loudness of the plea, one which curses me angrily as it went.

"I share its sentiment," I heard the Tengu Monk say to my right and I swiftly turned to face him. "If ever there was a more insufferable..." As his eyes fell to my stomach, and he saw, for the first time, my current state, his words trailed off. "You are pregnant," he remarked, not quite taken aback.

I nodded.

"And yet Kai has left your side?"

"I left him," I hastily yet softly corrected the demon's false notion.

"Why?" he asked. "You had your way to keep him. Kai is a man of honor; he would not leave you nor your child unprotected, especially considering his own past."

With both his words and attitude, I began to wonder if that had not been the demon's hope all along and the reason for his suggestion regarding the timeless woods.

"I stole away before I even knew...but what worth would remaining be without his love?" I countered. "I will not use a child to keep Kai near to me...I would not wish that on either the man I love nor the child he had has given to me without his knowledge."

The Tengu Monk searched my face for some understanding of why a foreigner, and a human as well, would not have accepted the most selfish course of action. "You have called me to help you _escape_ from him?"

I nodded a second time. "Yes."

"Where do you wish to go?" he asked.

"Back to my home," I said as bravely as I could though I was weeping. "Back to the people whom really do love me...but first to Dejima to make that chance possible."

The Tengu moved eeriely forward. He stood before me and then squatted down to meet my eyes. I might have been made mad from my grief, but I felt that he was humbled in some way by the act. "I will make sure that you and your child get there safely, Erin of Snaefell."

"Thank you," I said and sobbed in relief and loss. "Before I go, may I ask one last favor?"

"As presumptuous and foward as most of your kind," he stated.

I removed my hands from my rounded belly. "Bless the child of your ward and this brokenhearted woman," I requested. "Please, if you can lower yourself to do so..."

The demon was moved. I saw it clearly in his large yellow eyes, as well now as his obvious fondness for me. "You would accept the blessing of a _demon_?" he asked. "Would it not offend your God?"

"My God respects kindness and love," I stated, smiling now past my tears. "Infact, there is little He holds more precious in all of His creation, which you are a part of too."

The Tengu Monk's expression was unfathomable but he placed his hand suddenly where the child was resting until its day of birth and began to say words I could not understand. I felt instantly a deep glowing inside of my womb and our surroundings momentarily took on the odd hum of the Eien Forest. Wind seemed to begin to swirl around us, being born from the ground and whipping the fabric of my clothing and hair while the Monk remained unfazed and perfectly still. At last, both words and wind died and we were once again as normal as possible in a haunted and ethereal place.

"You will be as blessed as you can within this miserable existence," he stated.

"Thank ye," I repeated my gratitude.

"Now we shall send you where you wish to go, child," he stated, removing his hand from off my belly and turning his back to start another round of unknown chanting. I found my footing slowly and uneasily; by the time I was standing, a window had appeared before the Tengu demon. Through it, I saw Dejima: my first taste of a land outside my little Isle. "All you need to do is step through this portal," he whispered as I came to stand by his side. "I regret I cannot send you all the way back to your home."

"Tis fine. Do they see us?" I asked.

"Humans rarely see the important things," the Monk sighed. "They go about their business. You may step through without needing to worry that your fellow Christians will label you a witch for seeing a hint of magic."

I turned to thank him again, or to add to it a goodbye, but found my friend staring at me in anger. "GO!" he shouted.

I stepped through the portal and into the Dutch based sea port quickly but heard the demon call my attention back to him once I had made the journey successfully.

"Erin of Snaefell," the demon called out and continued only after our eyes had met. "Kai may not have been aware of it, or properly grateful, but he chose the perfect wife and mother to his child with you."

Those words spoken by the Monk, whom had raised Kai and cared for him deeply still in his own way, were the highest praise that the demon could send me away with.

A smile once more on my face, I reached out through the portal and found to my surprise the demon reaching back for me. Our hands rested together over the gateway's threshold and the Tengu offered me an enigmatic turn of his lips before he let go of the plump hand in his grip. As it dropped back to my side, the window between us fell, stealing my friend's visage, until I was standing in the bustling and crowded Dejima, all alone save for my unborn child.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> I'm looking over at my Funko Pop! collection and, methinks, it is getting out of hand. I'll give you a full list someday but right now I'm too damn tired. But I see Ted "Theodore" Logan, 2 John Wicks, 2 Johnny Silverhands and a Duke Caboom staring back at me with their big, black eyes. I wish I had Neo to add to the gang but he's out of my price range! 😭
> 
> I also see King Homer whom has nothing to do with you. Although, as I mentioned at the BRZRKR Kickstarter page, I can do a pretty good Marge Simpson imitation. I keep wanting to tell you that I could have her say something to you...
> 
> But you're Keanu Reeves! What would you need with my second rate false Marge Simpson impersonation? You could probably get the real thing!
> 
> I wish I could do something to impress you though. I keep hoping this series might but it might not either. Would its boldness, at least, if not the content? Or, at least, the time and the love?
> 
> Time does or doesn't exist by how you look at it. Some people think the same thing about love.
> 
> I believe that it does. Did you ever come to believe in it though?
> 
> Do you think there will ever come a time when you can give me the answer?
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


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